Formula E season 10 starts Saturday – new tracks and 600kW mid-race charging
Formula E returns to track this Saturday for its tenth season with a race in Mexico City, in a season that brings three new tracks and the debut of Formula E’s new ultra-fast mid-race charging system.
Formula E is the FIA’s top-level electric open-wheel racing series, racing single-seater racecars mostly on downtown street tracks in the world’s great cities. The series has so far raced in 24 countries and 30 cities across its first nine seasons, with 3 more new tracks and 1 new country added to the calendar for the tenth season.
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.
For season ten, Formula E’s faster, lighter, and much more angular Gen3 car returns, which debuted last season. It promised faster laptimes, but we saw only mildly improved laptimes compared to the previous year’s Gen2 equipment as teams got used to the new cars throughout the year.
But in this season’s winter testing in Valencia, the Gen3 cars proved to be more than a second faster than last year, suggesting that the teams might be getting the hang of their equipment (although part of this may have been due to testing occurring a month and a half earlier, in October, when the track was slightly warmer).
New tracks – Tokyo, Shanghai and Misano
Formula E will race on three new tracks and in one new country this year.
The biggest news is Formula E’s arrival in Tokyo, the world’s largest megacity and the series’ first race in Japan. The Tokyo race occurs around the “Tokyo Big Sight” international exhibition center, right alongside Tokyo Bay.
While Formula E has held many races in nearby Asian countries, it hasn’t been to race-obsessed Japan. Japan has its own racing leagues and Formula 1 is quite popular in the country, and the country has a particularly strong automotive industry. But that automotive industry has so far been hesitant to adopt electrification, so it will be good to see the reception for Formula E there.
Another new track will be in Shanghai, China. Formula E has raced in China multiple times before, at tracks in the capital Beijing (which held Formula E’s first race ever) and southern resort city Sanya. It has also raced in Hong Kong.
| Location | Date | Location | Date |
| Mexico City, Mexico | Jan 13 | Berlin, Germany | May 11 |
| Diriyah, Saudi Arabia | Jan 26 | Berlin, Germany | May 12 |
| Diriyah, Saudi Arabia | Jan 27 | Shanghai, China | May 25 |
| São Paulo, Brazil | Mar 16 | Shanghai, China | May 26 |
| Tokyo, Japan | Mar 30 | Portland, USA | Jun 29 |
| Misano, Italy | April 13 | Portland, USA | Jun 30 |
| Misano, Italy | April 14 | London, UK | Jul 20 |
| Monaco | April 27 | London, UK | Jul 21 |
The Shanghai race will be held at Shanghai International Circuit, a true race track rather than a street track. This track has been used for Formula One races in the past and is scheduled to host another F1 race again this year, and is a high speed circuit with several long straights. High speed circuits have offered an interesting challenge for Formula E in the past, as higher speeds mean lower efficiency and increase the benefit gained from drafting, especially in a low-downforce and energy-constrained series like this one.
Last year at Portland (another purpose-built race track, which the series returns to this year), the race ended up taking on similar strategy to a bicycle race, with cars saving energy in a peloton-like pack until later in the race where the true sprint began. We might expect to see something similar from Shanghai – though it’s also likely that Formula E will use a shorter layout instead of the full high-speed F1 layout, as it has done on other tracks before.
Finally, the last new track is in Italy, where the series has raced many times before on the downtown street circuit at the Rome ePrix, but the race is moving this year to another actual race circuit at Misano Adriatico, on the Adriatic coast of Italy. This track is often used as a motorcycle track, much like Formula E’s winter testing track in Valencia, with lower speeds and a shorter lap length than the full Shanghai circuit (but longer than the Portland circuit).
Mid-race charging is finally here
We’ve come a long way since the first Formula E season, when originally drivers would stop in the middle of the race to swap from one car to another with a fully-charged battery. Formula E had gone with this system because it would be too difficult to set up mid-race charging or battery swapping, so they just swapped the driver from one car to the other instead.
The Gen2 car solved this problem, as battery density had improved enough that battery (or car) swapping was no longer necessary. Since then, Formula E cars haven’t needed pit stops, and finish the race on the same battery and tire they started on.
But with EVs maturing and DC quick charging being in focus, Formula E is trying to incorporate that concept into racing now.
Formula E had originally planned to introduce a mid-race charging stop alongside the Gen3 car last year, but had to push back the plans for a year due to problems getting the equipment built.
Now, the system is ready to be used at select races this year, and it will debut at the aforementioned Misano Adriatico ePrix in Italy in April. For the races where it’s active, it will replace Formula E’s “Attack Mode” system, which gives every driver a period of boosted power use that they can use strategically to gain positions during the race.
The new mid-race charge system will be called “Attack Charge,” and will charge cars at up to 600kW, quite a bit faster than the fastest consumer-available fast chargers today that top out at 250-350kW.
Formula E says that a mandatory 30-second charging stop in the middle of the race will deliver about 4kWh of energy to the cars – this is only about ~10% worth of charge, but that’s not bad for 30 seconds of charging. This extra energy will be usable during periods later in the race where cars can boost power output to 350kW, rather than the standard 300kW.
The addition of a mid-race charging stop promises to shake up race results more, as teams will have some strategic flexibility about when to take their pit stops. This means more passing, which has always been a strong point of Formula E.
What to expect
Formula E has offered exciting racing all along, with significantly more lead changes and unpredictable racing than Formula One. Some of Formula E’s more chaotic races, like Portland last year, have had almost as many position changes during a single race as Formula One will see over an entire season.
Last season, 7 drivers from 6 teams won a Formula E race, whereas in F1 a single driver won 12 races on his own. The championship – which went to Jake Dennis, whose team Jaguar got second in the Teams’ championship behind Envision – wasn’t decided until the final race weekend, whereas the F1 championship was decided months before the season ended.
So if you’re interested in seeing unpredictable racing, Formula E is likely to provide that.
As with most years there have been a number of driver and team changes, with Nio leaving the sport and the team rebranding to ERT after new sponsorship. Several teams have swapped drivers or brought back former Formula E drivers, but the one new rookie is Jehan Daruvala, who joins Maserati. He comes from Formula 2 where his best season result was 7th, though he has ranked as high as 2nd in other series.
As much as the racing is unpredictable, over the course of a season the cream does tend to rise to the top. Some teams have classically done better across seasons, so we can expect the likes of Jaguar, Envision, Andretti, DS Penske and Porsche to show up near the top of the table. In winter testing, it looked as if the Jaguar powertrain, used by the Jaguar and Envision teams, performed best, so that bodes well for those two teams and their drivers Mitch Evans, Nick Cassidy, Robin Frijns and Sebastien Buemi.
The first race of Formula E’s tenth season is this Saturday at 8 PM UTC, Noon/12 PM PST, 3 PM EST, or 2 PM local Mexico City time. In the US, all sessions will be streamed live on Roku, or will be broadcast delayed on Sunday at 4:30PM on CBS. To find out how to watch it in other regions, check out Formula E’s “Ways to Watch” page.
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For years, Tesla has been the go-to EV recommendation for “normals” looking for a painless, low-effort experience from their first electric cars. In light of questionable recalls and its CEO’s recent involvement in controversial politics, however, people are starting to distance themselves from the trailblazing company.
All that begs the question: what should we recommend to EV noobs now?
Despite early quality issues and ongoing service headaches, the groundbreaking S3XY lineup of EVs have always had a secret weapon in the form of the Tesla Supercharger network.
That network of dependable high-speed chargers, paired with solid app integration that makes it easy for Tesla drivers to find available chargers just about anywhere in the US, gave the brand a leg up – but no more. By opening up the Supercharger network to brands like Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and others, Tesla has given away its biggest competitive advantage.
Add in charging and route-planning apps like Chargeway, that make navigating the transition from CCS to NACS easier than ever with its intuitive colors and numbers and easy on/off switch for vehicles equipped with NACS adapters, and it feels like the time is right to start suggesting alternatives to the old EV industry stalwarts. As such, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Here, then, are my picks for the best Tesla S3XY (and Cybertruck) alternatives you can buy.
Less Model S, more Lucid Air
Developed by OG Tesla Model S engineers with tunes from Annie Get Your Gun playing continuously in their heads, the Lucid Air promises to be the car Tesla should and could have built, if only Elon had listened to the engineers.
With panel fit, material finish, and overall build quality that’s at least as good as anything else in the automotive space, the Lucid Air is a compelling alternative to the Model S at every price level – and I, for one, would take a “too f@#king fast” Lucid Air Sapphire over an “as seen on TV” Model S Plaid any day of the week. And, with Supercharger access reportedly coming later this quarter, Air buyers will have every advantage the Supercharger Network can provide.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model 3, more Hyundai IONIQ 6
Hyundai has been absolutely killing it these days, with EVs driving record sales and new models earning rave reviews from the automotive press. Even in that company the IONIQ 6 stands out, with up to 338 miles of EPA-rated range and lickety-quick 350 kW charging available to make road tripping easy – especially now that the aerodynamically efficient IONIQ 6 has Supercharger access through a NACS adapter (the 2026 “facelift” models get a NACS port as standard).
The company’s sole electric sedan hasn’t seen the same sales success as IONIQ 5, of course – but that has more to do with America’s insatiable lust for crossovers and SUVs than any shortcoming inherent in the IONIQ 6 itself. All the same, Hyundai is helping dealers clear out its remaining 2024 and ’25 models with 0% financing for up to 48 months through June 2nd.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model X, more Volvo EX90
Once upon a time, Mrs. Jo Borrás and I were shopping three-row SUVs and found ourselves genuinely drawn to the then-new Model X. Back then it was the only three-row EV on the market, but it wasn’t Elon’s antics or access to charging, or even the Model X’s premium pricing that squirreled the deal. It was the stupid doors.
We went with the similarly new Volvo XC90 T8 in denim blue, and followed up the big PHEV with a second, three years later, in Osmium Gray. When it’s time to replace this one, you can just about bet your house that the new 510 hp EX90 with 310 miles of all-electric range will be near the top of the shopping list.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model Y, more Kia EV6
If half the fun of driving a Model Y is terrifying your passengers with its straight-line speed, then the Kia EV6 has to be a serious contender for a replacement.
The sporty EV6 GT made its global debut by drag racing some of the fastest ICE-powered cars of the day, including a Lamborghini, Mercedes-AMG GT, a Porsche, even a turbocharged Ferrari – and it beat the pants off ’em. Combine supercar-baiting speed with an accessible price tag, NACS accessibility, $10,000 in customer cash on remaining 2024 models ($3,000 on 2025s) and just a hint of Lancia Stratos in the styling, the EV6 is tough to beat.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Cybertruck, more therapy
It’s not bulletproof, it’s not easy to upfit, it shouldn’t be used for towing, and it won’t win in a straight fight against a vinyl picket fence. By just about every standard “truck” metric, the Tesla Cybertruck falls short against the competition from Chevrolet, Ford, and Rivian. On a more subjective front, the Cybertruck has become a symbol for a conservative movement that is (depending on your point of view) either making America great again or plunging a once-great democracy into an era of fascist oligarchy and widespread stupidity.
In short, it’s probably best to skip the CT.
If you disagree with that statement and feel like driving a new Tesla Cybertruck is the key to happiness, I’m not sure an equally ostentatious GMC Hummer EV or more subtle Rivian R1T will help you scratch that particular itch – but maybe therapy might!
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Original content from Electrek.
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Republicans launched multiple attacks against EVs, clean air and American jobs this week, at the behest of the oil industry that funds them. These attacks won’t be successful, and EVs will continue to grow regardless, and inevitably take over for outdated gasoline vehicles.
However, these republican attacks on EVs will still have some effect: they will diminish the US auto industry globally, leading to job losses and surrendering one of the jewels in the crown of American industry to China, where there is no similar effort to destroy its own domestic EV industry.
Republican attacks on clean air this week included moves to block funding that has led to a renaissance in US manufacturing and also to illegally block clean air laws. They also moved forward with a procedural step towards increasing US fuel costs by $23B, an effort which the former reality TV contestant posing as the head of the DOT announced in January.
These moves shouldn’t be a big surprise – republicans have opposed clean air and American jobs for many years now, and they’re doing it because they want to maintain the bribes they get from the oil industry.
But they should inspire worry for Americans, because they will only harm the country’s domestic manufacturing base in the face of a changing auto industry.
Republicans keep trying to kill clean cars
The last time a republican occupied the the White House, we saw similar efforts to try to raise fuel and health costs for Americans, and to block superior EV technology from flourishing. That didn’t work in the end, and EVs continued to grow both during that period and after.
All the while, fossil fuels have maintained their privileged policy position, being allowed to pollute with impunity and costing the US $760 billion per year in externalized costs. Much of that subsidy is accounted for in the cost of pollution from gas cars, which are one of the primary uses of fossil fuels, which means that, in fact, gasoline vehicles receive much more subsidy than EVs do.
And yet, EVs still managed to grow substantially, despite these headwinds. EV sales have continued to grow, both in the US and globally, even as headlines incorrectly say otherwise. The republican party’s attempts to kill them were futile, and will continue to be.
It didn’t work, but it did delay progress
However, anti-EV actions from Mr. Trump and the republican party did manage to delay progress from where it could have been if America actually instituted smart industrial policy earlier.
What if, instead of the bumbling, idiotic nonsense we went through the last time Mr. Trump squatted in the White House, we could have had something more like President Biden’s EV policy, which created hundreds of thousands of jobs and attracted hundreds of billions of dollars of manufacturing investment?
Surely the American auto industry would be ahead of where it is now if those investments had had time to come online. But instead, republicans are currently trying to kill those jobs, which has already led to several manufacturing projects being cancelled this year, depriving Americans of the economic boost they need right now.
Meanwhile, there’s one place that this sort of stumbling isn’t happening: China.
China is taking advantage
China has spent more than a decade focusing on securing material supply, building refining capacity, developing their own battery technology, and encouraging local EV manufacturing startups.
This has paid off recently, as Chinese EVs have been rapidly scaling in production in recent years. It took a lot of the auto industry by surprise how rapidly Chinese companies have scaled, and how rapidly Chinese consumers have adopted them, after having an initially slow start.
But that adoption hasn’t just been local, it’s also global. Last year, China became the largest auto exporter in the world, taking a crown that Japan had held for decades. But the change was even more dramatic than that – as recently as 2020, China was the sixth-largest auto exporter in the world, just behind the US in 5th place.
China’s dramatic turn upward started in 2020, and now it’s in first place. Meanwhile, because of all the faffing about, the US remains exactly where it was in 2020 – still in fifth place. Well, sixth now, since China eclipsed us (and everyone else).
Tariffs won’t fix it
The reaction of the rest of the world’s automaking countries has been to put tariffs on Chinese autos, hoping to forestall the country’s dramatic rise to dominance. (Although, due to Mr. Trump’s idiotic flailing, Europe is already talking about removing these trade barriers with China)
But tariffs have been tried before, and they didn’t work. When Japan had a similarly meteoric rise to global prominence as an auto manufacturer in the 1970s and 80s, largely due to their adoption of new technology, processes, and different car styles which incumbents were ignoring, the US tried to stop it with tariffs.
All this did was make US manufacturers complacent, and Japan still managed to seize and maintain the crown of top auto exporter (occasionally trading places with Germany) from then until now.
Then as now, the true way to compete is to adapt to the changing automotive industry and take EVs seriously, rather than giving the auto industry excuses to be complacent. But instead, republicans aren’t doing that, and in fact are working to ensure the American auto industry doesn’t adapt, by actively killing the incentives that were leading to a boom in domestic manufacturing investment.
US auto industry jeopardized by republicans
Make no mistake about it: destroying EV incentives, and allowing companies to pollute more and innovate less, will not help the US auto industry catch up with a fast moving competitor.
As we at Electrek have said for years, you cannot catch up to a competitor that is both ahead of you and moving faster than you.
This applies to individual companies, which took their sweet time responding to the challenge from electric upstarts like Tesla, and have now lost market share to said upstarts and let a competitor establish itself in a big way (even though Tesla’s CEO is now trying desperately to harm his own company specifically, and the US EV industry as a whole, by being the largest funder of the party working to destroy said industry).
It also applies to nations, which could have spent the last decade doing what the Chinese auto industry has been doing, but instead non-Chinese automakers have been begging their governments for more time, even though it’s not the regulations that threaten them, it’s competition from a new and motivated rival that is moving faster and in a more determined manner towards the future.
The way that we get around this should be clear: take EVs seriously.
But that’s not what republicans are doing, and in doing so, they are signing the death warrant for an important US industry in the long term.
Another thing republicans are trying to kill is the the rooftop solar credit, which means you could have only until the end of this year to install rooftop solar on your home before the cost of doing so goes up by an average of ~$10,000. So if you want to go solar, get started now, because these things take time and the system needs to be active before you file for the credit.
To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
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International equipment manufacturer Vermeer has unveiled a full-scale prototype of its Interlune excavator, a machine designed to ingest 100 metric tons of rocks and dirt per hour, extracting valuable helium as it makes its way across the surface … of the Moon.
Helium plays a critical role in the manufacturing of semiconductors, chips, optics, and all the other stuff that makes EVs, autonomy, the Internet, and the rest of twenty-first century life possible. The problem is that, despite being the second-most common element in the universe, helium is pretty rare on Earth – and we are rapidly running out. As such, there are intense economic and political pressures to find new and reliable sources of helium somewhere, anywhere else, and that demand has sparked a new modern space race focused on harvesting helium on the Moon and getting it back home.
To that end, companies like American lunar mining startup Interlune and the Iowa-based equipment experts at Vermeer are partnering on the development of suite of interplanetary equipment assets capable of digging up lunar materials like rocks and sand from up to three meters below the surface, extract helium-3 (a light, stable isotope of helium believed to exist in abundance on the Moon), then package it, contain it, and ship it back to Earth.
“When you’re operating equipment on the Moon, reliability and performance standards are at a new level,” says Rob Meyerson, Interlune CEO. “Vermeer has a legacy of innovation and excellence that started more than 75 years ago, which makes them the ideal partner for Interlune.”
Enter: Japan
America isn’t the only spacefaring nation eyeing a helium mine on the Moon. Japan announced similar plans back in 2023, with Japanese construction giant Komatsu announcing plans to develop a fully electric excavator capable of operating on the lunar surface.
The company showed a scaled prototype of the machine at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas (above), emphasizing the need to develop new ways to operate equipment assets in the extreme temperatures of extraplanetary environments beyond diesel or even hydrogen combustion.
On the airless surface of the moon, it would be impossible for an internal combustion engine to operate on the moon’s surface because there is no oxygen for combustion. Electrically powered machines seem the obvious solution with solar power generation supplying the electricity. But the answer is not that simple.
Temperature changes on the surface of the moon are extreme. They can soar to 110° C and plummet to -170° C. Developing electric construction machinery to perform in this environment is no easy task, but Komatsu is tackling issues one by one as they appear. Using thermal control and other electrification technologies, we are engineering solutions.
Despite Komatsu’s apparent head start, however, Vermeer seem to pulled ahead – not just in terms of machine development, but in terms of extraction potential as well.
“The high-rate excavation needed to harvest helium-3 from the Moon in large quantities has never been attempted before, let alone with high efficiency,” said Gary Lai, Interlune co-founder and CTO. “Vermeer’s response to such an ambitious assignment was to move fast. We’ve been very pleased with the results of the test program to date and look forward to the next phase of development.”
Interlune is funded by grants from the US Department of Energy and NASA TechFlights. In 2023, the company received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research award to develop the technology to size and sort lunar regolith (read: dirt). Interlune has raised $18 million in funding so far, and is planning its first mission to the Moon before 2030.
Electrek’s Take
We’ve got space travel, weird mineral extraction from another planet that’s essential for our technology, and a rapid, unchecked proliferation of AI. All we need now is big worms, a whole bunch of hallucinogenic narcotics, and the will to smash up a bunch of data centers with baseball bats – then we’ll have a pretty decent Dune LARP going. Yee-ha!
SOURCE | IMAGES: Interlune.
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