Formula E’s faster Gen3 car starts season 9 Saturday in Mexico City
Formula E is back for the start of season nine this weekend at the high-altitude Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City.
The season includes the new faster, lighter, and much more angular Gen3 car, new tracks, and more.
This is the first time Formula E has opened a season in Mexico City, with the last four seasons being launched in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. Unlike the last few seasons, the opening race is not a doubleheader this time around – there will only be one race, on Saturday, so if you wait until Sunday to tune in, you’ll miss the live action.
At nearly 2,300m/7,500ft altitude, Mexico City’s track provides an excellent demonstration of the strengths of electric drive. Combustion vehicles that race there have to contend with thinner air, which means less efficient combustion and lower engine power. With electric drive, this isn’t a worry – electric motors work equally well at any elevation.
New car
The most exciting change this year is the new car, which is a big change from last year’s car. The Gen3 spec looks very different than before, with a much more angular look.
They’re also smaller in every dimension – length, width, wheelbase, height, and most importantly weight. Smaller cars mean there’s more room on the track, which can potentially mean more overtakes on track. Smaller, lighter cars also perform better, since there’s less weight to push around in turns or during acceleration or braking.
But the biggest and most interesting change is in the powertrain. In addition to a boost to 350kW of power (as compared to 250kW in Gen2) and top speed of 200mph, the Gen3 car also has an additional 250kW front motor specifically for regenerative braking. This makes the Formula E Gen3 car the first Formula car to have both front and rear powertrains.
This means the car is capable of regenerating up to 600kW of power under braking, more than double what it could last year. So the cars will be more efficient and, therefore, able to go further and faster.
In fact, there’s so much energy recovery available from the motors that the car won’t even have rear brakes. Instead of rear friction brakes, the car relies only on its 350kW motor for rear braking. It still has front friction brakes, given that the front axle does the majority of work during braking due to load transfer, but the front brakes won’t need to be as large since they’re backed up by the front motor.
That said, these two powertrains do not make the Gen3 car an all-wheel drive vehicle. Like other formula cars, it still gets all of its acceleration power from the rear axle. But theoretically it would be possible to move to all-wheel drive without a significant car redesign, so we wonder if that might be in the Gen3 car’s future.
That power now goes through Hankook instead of Michelin tires, as Formula E has changed tire suppliers for the first time. But the tires will remain all-weather, treaded tires, suitable for street racing even in wet(-ish) conditions, rather than racing slicks like most racing cars use, which offer much better grip in dry conditions. So between a more powerful rear motor and all-weather tires, Formula E cars will continue to be squirrelly on corner exit, testing driver skill at every turn.
So there isn’t that much of a change in balance during acceleration, but the new car should offer a totally different braking experience, which will take the drivers some time to get used to, especially the first time they take to the track in anger this weekend. We expect some interesting passing opportunities in the early half of the season.
That 600kW of total system regenerative braking capacity is relevant in another way, too. The car’s battery is capable of up to 600kW DC quick charging. Not only does this get used in the race by the braking system, but Formula E plans to add mid-race charging pit stops this year.
In races with these pit stops, the series will require that every driver make a short charging stop, and doing so will unlock activations of “attack mode,” a higher power mode which gives the cars a boost in energy for a few minutes at a time. This change should add more passing and dynamism to the race, while also demonstrating 600kW charging, twice the speed of the fastest consumer chargers.
All of this put together resulted in cars going about half a second faster around the test track in Valencia during pre-season testing last month, part of which was in wet conditions, which meant teams didn’t get as many dry laps as they’d like. While half a second doesn’t sound like a lot, it’s quite a bit in racing – and it’s also a comparison between an outgoing powertrain and an incoming one.
Whenever technology changes happen, it takes a while for teams and drivers to get used to them, and for changes this significant, we can imagine there will be quite a learning curve. We wouldn’t be surprised if the cars end up even faster after shaking out the new technology through the rest of the season.
New tracks
The race calendar is the biggest change we’ve seen in a while, with four new circuits that Formula E has never raced on before: Hyderabad, India; Cape Town, South Africa; São Paulo, Brazil; and Portland, Oregon.
As with other Formula E seasons, particularly during the time of COVID, the calendar is subject to change. Previously the series planned to race again in Seoul, South Korea, which closed out the last season of racing. But that race had to be cancelled due to renovations and was replaced by Cape Town. But the four new circuits still need to be certified by the FIA for race preparedness, so it’s entirely possible we will see some changes to the calendar.
Hyderabad will host the first Formula E race in India, home of Mahindra racing, a longstanding fan favorite team in the series. Cape Town isn’t the first time Formula E has visited Africa – but the other visits have been in North Africa, so it’s the first sub-Saharan site the series has visited. São Paulo is the first time Formula E has visited race-obsessed Brazil, a country with a long history and rabid fanbase in motorsport, though the series has visited nearby Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile many times. And Portland will be the fourth location in the United States that has seen a Formula E race, behind Long Beach, Miami and New York. We’ve now seen one race in each corner of the United States. (Sorry middle America – you’re next perhaps?)
Other changes
One long-awaited rule change, at least amongst motorsport fans, is the end of FanBoost.
FanBoost was conceived in the original season of Formula E as a way to drive fan engagement. Fans could vote for their favorite driver on social media and the top three drivers would get a short boost of power they could use at any point during the race.
While it rarely had a big effect on racing, especially in recent years as the boosts got shorter, many motorsport fans immediately dismissed the series thinking that FanBoost sullied the purity of it all (as motorsport fans are wont to say about … almost everything).
As happens every season and even mid-season, drivers have shifted from team to team and even the teams have made some shifts as well.
Defending champion Stoffel Vandoorne, who won last year with Mercedes, has shifted to DS Penske (formerly DS Techeetah), alongside two-time champion Jean-Eric Vergne. Mercedes was last year’s constructor’s champion, but they have left the series, and their team is now in the hands of McLaren.
In addition to McLaren taking over for Mercedes, we’ve had other team changes as well. Nissan has taken full ownership of the e.dams team, the ABT team is back with the help of Cupra after missing last year due to ending their relationship with Audi, DS has cut ties with Techeetah and partnered with Penske instead, and Maserati has taken over the ROKiT Venturi team in their first return to racing as a constructor since the 1950s.
Several drivers have shifted teams or departed the series (including veteran and longtime EV advocate Alexander Sims, who we’re sad to see go). But we want to focus on the two new drivers: Sacha Fenestraz and Jake Hughes.
Fenestraz participated in the very last race of last season (taking over for Giovinazzi after a hand injury), so he’s essentially a rookie this year. He’s a French former Formula Renault Eurocup champion and has been a Formula E reserve driver for Jaguar for the last few seasons.
Hughes has raced in several series, and is a former champion of the BRDC Formula 4, now known as the GB3 championship, which is the top single-seater racing category in Britain, where Hughes hails from. He served as a reserve and development driver for Mercedes’ team for the last two seasons and will start racing this weekend, with McLaren.
The racing starts on Saturday January 14 at 2:00 pm local Mexico City time, which is noon Pacific Time, 3:00 pm Eastern and 8:00 pm UTC. The race will be aired on CBS Sports Network in the United States (though it looks like it will be shown delayed at 11:30 pm Eastern). Practice sessions will be streamed on YouTube.
If you’re not in the United States, you can check the Formula E website for ways to watch in your country. If you can’t find a way to watch the race live, Formula E usually uploads race highlights to their youtube channel within days, though we don’t know whether they’ll be posting full races on there as this seems to change season to season.
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Newly published data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), reviewed by the SUN DAY Campaign, reveal that solar accounted for over 75% of US electrical generating capacity added in the first nine months of 2025. In September alone, solar provided 98% of new capacity, marking 25 consecutive months in which solar has led among all energy sources.
Year-to-date (YTD), solar and wind have each added more new capacity than natural gas has. The mix of all renewables remains on track to exceed 40% of installed capacity within three years; solar alone may be 20%.
Solar was 75% of new generating capacity YTD
In its latest monthly “Energy Infrastructure Update” report (with data through September 30, 2025), FERC says 48 “units” of solar totaling 2,014 megawatts (MW) were placed into service in September, accounting for 98% of all new generating capacity added during the month. Oil provided the balance (40 MW).
The 567 units of utility-scale (>1 MW) solar added during the first nine months of 2025 total 21,257 MW and were 75.3% of the total new capacity placed into service by all sources. Solar capacity added YTD is 6.5% more than that added during the same period a year earlier.
Solar has now been the largest source of new generating capacity added each month for 25 consecutive months, from September 2023 to September 2025. During that period, total utility-scale solar capacity grew from 91.82 gigawatts (GW) to 158.43 GW. No other energy source added anything close to that amount of new capacity. Wind, for example, expanded by 11.07 GW while natural gas’s net increase was just 4.60 GW.
Between January and September, new wind energy has provided 3,724 MW of capacity additions – an increase of 28.6% compared to the same period last year and more than the new capacity provided by natural gas (3,161 MW). Wind accounted for 13.2% of all new capacity added during the first nine months of 2025.
Renewables were 88% of new capacity added YTD
Wind and solar (plus 4 MW of hydropower and 6 MW of biomass) accounted for 88.5% of all new generating capacity while natural gas added just 11.2% YTD. The balance of net capacity additions came from oil (63 MW) and waste heat (17 MW).
Utility-scale solar’s share of total installed capacity (11.78%) is now virtually tied with that of wind (11.80%). If recent growth rates continue, utility-scale solar capacity should surpass that of wind in FERC’s next “Energy Infrastructure Update” report.
Taken together, wind and solar make up 23.58% of the US’s total available installed utility-scale generating capacity.
Moreover, more than 25% of US solar capacity is in the form of small-scale (e.g., rooftop) systems that are not reflected in FERC’s data. Including that additional solar capacity would bring the share provided by solar and wind to more than a quarter of the US total.
With the inclusion of hydropower (7.59%), biomass (1.05%) and geothermal (0.31%), renewables currently claim a 32.53% share of total US utility-scale generating capacity. If small-scale solar capacity is included, renewables now account for more than one-third of the total US generating capacity.
Solar soon to be No. 2 source of US generating capacity
FERC reports that net “high probability” net additions of solar between October 2025 and September 2028 total 90,614 MW – an amount almost four times the forecast net “high probability” additions for wind (23,093 MW), the second fastest growing resource.
FERC also foresees net growth for hydropower (566 MW) and geothermal (92 MW) but a decrease of 126 MW in biomass capacity.
Meanwhile, natural gas capacity is projected to expand by 6,667 MW, while nuclear power is expected to add just 335 MW. In contrast, coal and oil are projected to contract by 24,011 MW and 1,587 MW, respectively.
Taken together, the net new “high probability” net utility-scale capacity additions by all renewable energy sources over the next three years – the Trump administration’s remaining time in office – would total 114,239 MW. On the other hand, the installed capacity of fossil fuels and nuclear power combined would shrink by 18,596 MW.
Should FERC’s three-year forecast materialize, by mid-fall 2028, utility-scale solar would account for 17.3% of installed U.S. generating capacity, more than any other source besides natural gas (39.9%). Further, the capacity of the mix of all utility-scale renewable energy sources would exceed 38%. The inclusion of small-scale solar, assuming it retains its 25% share of all solar energy, could push solar’s share to over 20% and that of all renewables to over 41%, while the share of natural gas would drop to less than 38%.
In fact, the numbers for renewables could be significantly higher.
FERC notes that “all additions” (net) for utility-scale solar over the next three years could be as high as 232,487 MW, while those for wind could total 65,658 MW. Hydro’s net additions could reach 9,927 MW while geothermal and biomass could increase by 202 MW and 32 MW, respectively. Such growth by renewable sources would swamp that of natural gas (29,859 MW).
“In an effort to deny reality, the Trump Administration has just announced a renaming of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in which it has removed the word ‘renewable’,” noted the SUN DAY Campaign’s executive director Ken Bossong. “However, FERC’s latest data show that no amount of rhetorical manipulation can change the fact that solar, wind, and other renewables continue on the path to eventual domination of the energy market.”
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The Century is considered the most luxurious Toyota, and now it’s being spun off into its own high-end brand. Despite the rumors, the ultra-luxury brand won’t be as electric as expected.
Toyota sets new luxury brand up to fail with ICE plans
First introduced in 1967, the Century was launched in celebration of Toyota’s founder, Sakichi Toyoda’s 100th birthday.
The Century has since become a symbol of status and wealth in Japan, often used as a chauffeur car by high-profile company officials.
Toyota previewed the future of the ultra-luxury marquee at the 2025 Japan Mobility Show in October, launching it as a new standalone brand positioned above Lexus.
The new Century brand is set to rival higher-end automakers like Rolls-Royce and Bentley, but it won’t be as electric as initially expected. Toyota’s powertrain boss, Takashi Uehara, told CarExpert that the luxury brand’s first vehicle will, in fact, have an internal combustion engine.
Although no other details were offered, Uehara confirmed, “Yes, it will have an engine.” As to what kind, that has yet to be decided, Toyota’s powertrain president explained.
Like the next-gen Lexus supercar and upcoming Toyota GR GT, Uehara said the Century model could include a V8 engine.
The Century has been Toyota’s only vehicle with a V12 engine. In 2018, Toyota dropped the V12 in favor of a V8 hybrid powertrain for its third-generation.
Toyota’s Century launched its first SUV in 2023, currently on sale in Japan with a V6 plug-in hybrid system alongside the sedan.
Already widely considered the biggest laggard in the shift to fully electric vehicles, Toyota doubled down, developing a series of new internal combustion engines for upcoming models.
Century is one of the five global brands the Japanese auto giant introduced in October, along with Daihatsu, GR Sport, Lexus, and Toyota.
Electrek’s Take
It’s not surprising to see Toyota sticking with ICE for its ultra-luxury Century brand, but it will likely be a costly move.
Chinese auto giants, such as BYD and FAW Group, are quickly expanding into new segments, including high-end models under luxury brands such as Yangwang and Hongqi.
These companies are now expanding into new overseas markets, like Europe and Southeast Asia, where Japanese brands like Toyota have traditionally dominated, to drive growth.
Top luxury brands, including Porsche, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, are already struggling to keep pace with Chinese EV brands. How does Toyota plan to compete with an “ultra-luxury” brand that still sells outdated ICE vehicles? We will find out more over the coming months and years as new sales data is released.
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SparkCharge has partnered with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) and Zipcar to launch the Northeast’s first off‑grid, mobile DC fast‑charging hub for shared EVs. The goal is to bring fast, reliable EV charging infrastructure into communities without having to wait for costly or slow grid upgrades.
The hub sits at Zipcar’s maintenance facility in East Boston, an Environmental Justice community. It’s funded through MassCEC’s InnovateMass program and gives onsite mechanics the ability to quickly recharge a rotating fleet of Zipcar EVs before they’re dispatched across Greater Boston. Members and rideshare drivers who rent Zipcars will get steadier access to charged EVs.
“Electrification should never be limited by where the grid is or how long it takes,” SparkCharge founder and CEO Joshua Aviv said. “With this program in East Boston, we’re showing how fleets can deploy at scale, in any community, and deliver clean mobility today.”
At the center of the setup is SparkCharge’s Mobile Battery‑Powered Trailer, which delivers 320 kW of DC fast charging without the delays and big price tags that usually come with fixed infrastructure. The trailer can recharge from Zipcar’s existing onsite power between sessions, topping up its high‑capacity batteries without stressing the local grid. Since it avoids major grid upgrades entirely, the model is designed to deploy quickly and at zero upfront cost for fleets.
MassCEC says the project shows what community‑first fast charging can look like. “Every resident deserves access to clean, reliable transportation,” said Leslie Nash, MassCEC’s senior director of Technology‑to‑Market. “By partnering with SparkCharge and Zipcar in East Boston, we’re showing how Massachusetts is leading the way in clean transportation innovation.”
The hub also plays into Massachusetts’ push to hit its net‑zero 2050 targets. As shared mobility grows, electrifying fleets will be key to cutting emissions in dense urban corridors. This project introduces a scalable charging option to a part of Boston that is underserved by public charging, helping to keep Zipcar’s EVs reliably on the road.
“For twenty‑five years, Zipcar has been a leader in shared mobility, and we’re proud to take another step toward a more sustainable future,” said Angelo Adams, Zipcar’s president. “Working with SparkCharge and MassCEC allows us to bring fast, reliable EV charging directly to our members and rideshare drivers.”
Zipcar, which is owned by car rental company Avis Budget, announced on December 1 that it was shutting down its UK operations by December 31, 2025. An Avis Budget spokesperson stated that the reason was “to streamline operations, improve returns, and position the company for long-term sustainability and growth,” adding that “all other markets remain unaffected.”
Read more: With a $30M raise, SparkCharge takes EV fleet charging off-grid
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Your personalized heat pump quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here. – *ad
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
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