Formula E calendar revealed with new races in Shanghai and Tokyo

Published

1 year ago

October 19, 2023

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Formula E has announced its 2024 Season 10 calendar, with 16 races across 11 cities around the world. New for this season: Shanghai and Tokyo are hosting races, marking the first time the series has raced in Japan.

Formula E is FIA’s top-level electric open-wheel racing series, now entering its 10th season. It recently announced that its fanbase grew 17% globally last year and overtook NASCAR as the fourth most popular motorsport series in the world.

The philosophy of the series is to bring zero-emission racing directly into the heart of cities, since electric cars don’t create nearly as much disruption in terms of noise and exhaust as belching V6s or V8s do. So for the most part, these races happen on city streets, with all-weather street tires, rather than on purpose-built racing circuits.

Over the course of the series’ history it has visited a total of 30 cities, and this year it’s adding two more to that list.

Most prominently, the racing will come to Tokyo, the most populous city in the world. This is the first time Japan has hosted a Formula E race, though several nearby countries in East Asia have already hosted the series (Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc).

Formula E’s visit to Japan is interesting because while Japan is full of racing fans and is a global auto industry stalwart, the Japanese auto industry has been reluctant to fully embrace electric cars. Only 3% of cars sold in Japan in 2022 were electric, which is even lower than the rather low 6-7% of the US market. So it will be nice for those race fans to witness the joy of going to a race without all the stink and noise of obnoxious gas engines, and maybe have their perceptions slightly shifted as a result.

In addition, Shanghai, the most populous city in China, will host a race for the first time. Previously Formula E has been to China’s capital, Beijing (which held the series’ very first race in season 1), and Sanya, a Chinese coastal resort city. It has also raced in Hong Kong.

The Shanghai race will be a “double-header,” with two races back-to-back on the same weekend. Formula E has hosted several race weekends like this in the past, and is planning to do five of them again this year. This year, doubleheaders are coming to Berlin, Shanghai, London and Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. There is also a planned doubleheader in Italy, but Formula E hasn’t finalized which city that race will be in – in the past, it’s been Rome, but it looks like there’s a chance of that changing.

As for the US, the racing returns to Portland, where the series debuted last year with quite an interesting race. This race was anomalous due to Portland’s wide and high-speed racing circuit, in contrast to the street circuits of most other races. This resulted in drivers strategically saving energy and staying in a close pack, almost like a Peloton from a cycling race. Then came the end of the race where, after much jockeying for position, everyone finally let loose in an explosion of action.

Formula E is currently about to start season 10 testing in Valencia and recently announced a new rookie driver, Gabriela Jilkova, who will drive for Porsche in the winter tests. She is the first female driver to drive for the series since 2016.

To see the full calendar for Season 10, have a look below. And when time comes, head on over to the “Ways to Watch” section on Formula E’s website to find out how to watch races in your area.

ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, Season 10 Calendar

Event	Round(s)	Location	Date(s)
1	1	Mexico City, Mexico	Jan. 13, 2024
2	2 &3	Diriyah, Saudi Arabia	Jan. 26 & 27 2024
3	4	Hyderabad, India	Feb. 10, 2024
4	5	São Paulo, Brazil	Mar. 16, 2024
5	6	Tokyo, Japan	Mar. 30, 2024
6	7 & 8	Italy TBD	Apr. 13 & 14 2024
7	9	Monaco, Principality of Monaco	Apr. 27 2024
8	10 & 11	Berlin, Germany	May 11 & 12 2024
9	12 & 13	Shanghai, China	May 25 & 26 2024
10	14	Portland, United States	Jun. 29 2024
11	15 & 16	London, United Kingdom	Jul. 20 & 21 2024

Electrek’s Take

As a racing fan, I find Formula E one of the more exciting series out there. The cars are a lot closer in performance to each other than in other series (*cough* F1 *cough*), and the racing and qualifying format encourages unpredictability.

As a result, you see a lot more passing in Formula E, and a lot more race winners, than in Formula 1. In some races, Formula E will have about as many passes in a single race as F1 has in an entire season (last year, the Portland ePrix had 403 overtakes, whereas F1 races averaged 45 overtakes per race). And a few seasons ago, Formula E had eight different race winners from seven different teams in the first eight races, whereas last year in F1, the same driver won 15 out of 22 races (and the team won 17 out of 22).

So, tuning into a Formula E race means you’ll actually see something interesting and different, whereas tuning into Formula 1 is like endlessly watching reruns. I know which one I’d pick (and have – I don’t watch F1 anymore).

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Environment

Oil giant Saudi Aramco posts 15% drop in third-quarter profit but maintains dividend

Published

4 hours ago

November 5, 2024

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Oil giant Saudi Aramco posts 15% drop in third-quarter profit but maintains dividend

Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal

Ahmed Jadallah | Reuters

Saudi state oil giant Aramco reported a 15.4% drop in net profit in the third-quarter on the back of “lower crude oil prices and weakening refining margins,” but maintained a 31.05 billion dividend.

The company reported net income of $27.56 billion in the July-September period, topping a company-provided estimate of $26.9 billion. The print is also a 5% drop from the previous quarter, which came in at $29.1 billion, as lower global oil prices, weaker demand and prolonged OPEC+ production cuts led by Saudi Arabia continue to impact crude prices.

The average selling price of oil for the second quarter of 2024 stood at $85 per barrel, but dropped to $78.7 per barrel during the third quarter, according to Saudi-based bank Al Rajhi capital, as non-OPEC supply volumes grew.

The oil firm said its year-on-year decline was partly offset by a “reduction in selling, administrative and general expenses primarily driven by a gain from derivative instruments, and a decrease in production royalties largely reflecting lower crude oil prices and a lower average effective royalty rate compared to the same quarter last year.”

Aramco’s dividend includes a base payout of $20.3 billion and an atypical performance-linked one of $10.8 billion. The Saudi government and the kingdom’s sovereign wealth vehicle, the Public Investment Fund, are the main beneficiaries of the dividend, holding stakes of roughly 81.5% and 16% in the company.

The remaining shareholding trades freely on Saudi Arabia’s Tadāwul stock exchange, with the company having finalized its second public share offering back in June.

Aramco’s earnings before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) came in at $51.45 billion in the third quarter, down 17% year-on-year. Aramco’s capital expenditure guidance was brought up 20% to $13.23 billion.

The company was trading at 27.45 riyals following the announcement, down 0.18% on the previous day.

The earnings align with a broader trend across oil majors, whose third-quarter profits have also suffered from declines in crude prices and refining margins. Aramco said it achieved average realized crude price of $79.3 per barrel in the third quarter, compared with $89.3 per barrel in the same period of last year.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter who produces roughly 9 million barrels per day of crude at present, serves as the de facto leader of the OPEC+ oil producers’ alliance, a subset of whom agreed over the weekend to delay a planned December output hike by one month.

OPEC chief says delayed December output hike is 'nothing unusual'

“Aramco delivered robust net income and generated strong free cash flow during the third quarter, despite a lower oil price environment,” CEO Amin Nasser said in a statement. “We also progressed our upstream developments, strengthened our downstream value chain, and advanced our new energies program as we continue to invest through cycles.”

The revenues will be a boon to the Saudi economy, which is currently undergoing a diversification process under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s legacy Vision 2030 scheme spanning a slew of high-cost infrastructure “gigaprojects.”

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Finance cut the kingdom’s growth forecast to 0.8% in 2024, in a steep decline from a previous projection of 4.4%, and raised the outlook for the national budgetary shortfall to roughly 2.9% of GDP, from a prior indication of 1.9%.

Environment

Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

Published

10 hours ago

November 5, 2024

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Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

On today’s episode of Quick Charge, Tesla’s Cybertruck is now available in Canada – and, like in the US, there’s no waiting! Plus, we’ve got an “actually” smart summon Tesla that’s actually stuck, GM reaches a sales milestone, and we get a brand-new title sponsor!

Today’s episode is the first with our new title sponsor, BLUETTI – a leading provider of portable power stations, solar generators, and energy storage systems.

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New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonusLucid proves than an EV company can keep its promises while Xiaomi teams up with Chevrolet and Honda to prove – at least conceptually – that records are made to be broken. audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news!

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Environment

This ‘supercharger on wheels’ brings fast charging to you [update]

Published

12 hours ago

November 4, 2024

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This 'supercharger on wheels' brings fast charging to you [update]

Mobile car care company Yoshi Mobility launched a DC fast charging EV mobile unit that it likens to “a supercharger on wheels.”

November 4, 2024 update: Yoshi Mobility will only be charging EVs on the side of the road now – it announced today that it’s selling its fleet fueling operation to EZFill Holdings (Nasdaq: EZFL).

It was originally founded as a direct-to-consumer, mobile fueling business in 2016, but now it’s going to focus on mobile EV charging, virtual vehicle inspections for partners like Uber and Turo, and onsite preventative maintenance.

Bryan Frist, Yoshi Mobility’s CEO & cofounder, said, “By spinning off our fuel business and focusing all of our energy on solving hair-on-fire problems that fleet owners face, we are meeting the changing needs of enterprise customers while making the future of transportation safer, cleaner, and more sustainable.”

May 22, 2024: Yoshi Mobility saw that its existing customers needed mobile EV charging in places where infrastructure has yet to be installed, so the Nashville-based company decided to bring the mountain to Moses.

“We recognized a demand among our customers for convenient daily charging, reliable private charging networks, and proper charging infrastructure to support their fleet vehicles as they transition to electric,” said Dan Hunter, Yoshi Mobility’s chief EV officer and cofounder.

The company says its 240 kW mobile DC fast charger, which can turn “any EV” into a mobile charging unit, is the first fully electric mobile charger available. It can provide multiple charges in a single trip but doesn’t detail how they charge the DC fast charger or who manufactured it. (I asked for more details, and they replied that they won’t disclose client names or the manufacturer of its DC fast charger yet.)

Yoshi is launching its mobile charger on two GM BrightDrop Zevo 600s and will introduce additional vehicles throughout 2024. It aims for full commercialization by Q1 2025. (I wonder if the Zevo 600 ever charges itself? Yes, I asked that too.)

Yoshi Mobility says it’s already deployed its EV charging solutions to service “major OEMs, autonomous vehicle companies, and rideshare operators” across the US. Its initial customers are made up of large EV operators managing “hundreds” of light-duty vehicles requiring up to 1 megawatt of energy per day that don’t yet have grid-connected EV chargers. I’ve asked Yoshi for details of who it’s working with, and will update if they share that info.

The company says pricing is based on location and enterprise charging needs. Once under contract for service, the service will be deployed to US-based customers within 10 days.

To date, Yoshi Mobility has raised more than $60 million, with investments from GM Ventures, Bridgestone, ExxonMobil, and Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley.

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