Formula E’s new all-wheel drive formula car races this Saturday for the first time
Formula E’s 11th season starts on Saturday in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and includes the debut of the new Gen3 EVO car – which iterates on the original Gen3 car by activating the front motor, giving more grip and even faster acceleration than a Formula One car.
Formula E is the FIA’s top-level electric racing series, racing single-seater open-wheel formula cars on famous racetracks and in downtown city centers – where quieter, zero-emission cars can get away with things that noisy gassers cannot.
It’s now on its eleventh season, and there’s been plenty of excitement and unpredictability throughout. The series has remained competitive, with championship battles often coming down to the last race with multiple drivers and teams vying for the win – unlike F1, where championship battles are often decided midway through the season.
And Formula E has been iterating on its vehicles pretty rapidly, with changes every couple years adding new capabilities and making the cars faster.
Early Formula E seasons started with a much less powerful vehicle, and drivers would even swap vehicles mid-race (battery swapping was deemed too complicated, so they just swapped cars instead).
In 2018, Formula E introduced the Gen 2 car which was more powerful and no longer needed to swap mid-race. Then in 2022, the Gen 3 car started racing, with the addition of a front motor to be used for stronger regenerative braking.
On the original iteration of the Gen 3 car, the front motor wasn’t active during acceleration – but that’s changing now, as the modified Gen 3 EVO car will be able to use the front motor during qualifying, race starts, and during “attack mode,” a short boost in power that drivers can activate during the race to gain an advantage. So, technically, this means these cars are going to be all-wheel drive, at least some of the time.
All-wheel drive has been popular on road cars recently, because it enhances acceleration and drivability. And on EVs, it’s quite easy to add, because you can just slap a second motor on the other axle and run a few cables to it, rather than needing to run driveshafts and gearing mechanisms all through your car to transfer the power from a single combustion engine to two separate axles.
However, sportscar and racing enthusiasts have often preferred rear-wheel drive because it makes cars more squirrelly and difficult to control, showcasing driver skill more readily.
So this is a pretty big change – single seat open-wheel racing has historically been all rear-wheel drive with few driver aids involved. There have been a few all-wheel drive cars tried in the past, but currently other open-wheel single seaters (like F1, IndyCar and the like) are rear-wheel drive only.
Another big change for this year is in the tires, which will be grippier than last season. The Gen 3 car originally didn’t improve laptimes as much as expected, likely due to a change in tire supplier, and this year’s tires promise to be more capable of handling the car’s higher power output.
Further, we might finally see the debut of the “attack charge” mid-race charging feature. Along with the introduction of a front motor, Gen3 brought 600kW charging capability. This was mostly used for better regenerative braking, but Formula E also said it wanted to introduce a mid-race 600kW charge.
But introduction of that feature got pushed back multiple times, so now, even if Formula E says it’s ready to introduce it – we’ll believe it when it happens. It was tested at pre-season testing in Spain last month, so that’s one step done at least.
If it does get introduced this year, it will likely be at a double-header race, with one race using the mid-race charge system, and the other not.
The new season comes along with changes in drivers and teams, as they often do. Lola cars has taken over the ABT team, running a racing team for the first time since 1997 now alongside Yamaha, and last season’s ERT team has rebranded as Cupra Kiro. Maserati committed to return – and has committed to the entirety of the future Gen4 era, through 2030.
Drivers have shifted around from team to team, with two new rookie drivers joining the grid – Zane Maloney who joins the Lola team after previously racing in Formula 2, and Taylor Barnard who drove 3 races last year for McLaren but now starts the season as a full-time driver.
Tracks have changed as well, with the retirement of the Misano ePrix, meaning no more races in Italy. Saudi Arabia, which previously hosted several season openers at the Riyadh street circuit, will move its races to a new street circuit in Jeddah. The Portland ePrix (which was great the last couple years) is going away, being replaced by the Miami ePrix – which was previously held in 2015, though now will happen at the Homestead-Miami speedway NASCAR track, instead of the previous Miami street circuit along Biscayne Bay. The headline Monaco ePrix, at the world-famous Circuit de Monaco, will become a doubleheader for the first time, with two races on the same weekend. And the Jakarta ePrix is back, after being skipped in 2024.
This weekend’s race is at the Sao Paulo street circuit, which has hosted Formula E twice before. Since Formula E seasons start just before the end of the year and the Sao Paulo ePrix was scheduled from mid-season to the season opener, we’re now getting a second 2024 Sao Paulo ePrix – the last of which was won by Sam Bird. The 2023 race was won by Mitch Evans.
The circuit goes along the city’s Carnival route, with a long back straight interrupted by one chicane, and a return to the start/finish line through some side streets with tight turns. The long straights should offer good opportunities for overtaking, but also add to difficulty in energy management for the teams.
The race starts this Saturday, December 7, at 2pm local Sao Paulo time. That’s Noon Eastern time, 9am Pacific time, and 5pm UTC. You can check out how to watch the race in your area by going to Formula E’s “Ways to Watch” section. In the US, Roku should be the most reliable way to watch.
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Tesla is now pulling on all the demand levers in the US with new discounts and incentives as sales are crashing due to brand damage.
Over the last few days, Tesla has introduced a series of new discounts and incentives in the US.
Previously, Tesla had a program to offer a $1,000 discount for US military personnel, but the automaker has now extended it to “students, teachers, first-responders, military veterans, retirees, active-duty members, their spouses, and surviving spouses.”
The update incentive applies to Tesla’s entire lineup of new vehicles.
Tesla also introduced a new incentive for Lyft drivers. They are eligible to $1,000 in Tesla credits when taking delivery and $1,000 from Lyft if they complete 100 deliveries by July 13.
The automaker wrote on its website:
Eligible Lyft drivers who purchase a new Tesla vehicle can receive $1,0001 in Tesla Credits upon taking delivery and a $1,000 incentive from Lyft after completing 100 trips on or before July 13, 2025. Tesla Credits can be used toward Supercharging, a new Tesla vehicle, service appointments or select Tesla Shop or upgrade purchases. Offer available to active Lyft drivers in good standing.
Tesla also started reaching out to Cybertruck reservation holders to let them know that they only have a month before they can’t take advantage of lower FSD prices.
The automaker wrote in the email:
As an early reservation holder, you have access to a reserved Full Self-Driving (Supervised) price of $7,000. To keep this price, you’ll need to take delivery by June 15, 2025. After June 15, 2025, FSD (Supervised) will be available at the latest price, which is currently $8,000.
When Tesla started taking Cybertruck reservations in 2019, Tesla said that by reserving the truck, reservation holders were locking in the then $7,000 price for its ‘Full Self-Driving’ package.
It looks like Tesla is now putting a deadline to take advantage of this deal to boost orders of the Cybertruck, which has proven to be a commercial flop.
On top of all these incentives, Tesla is also subsidizing interest rates to offer 0% financing on Model 3, and 1.99% financing on Model Y.
All those incentives in place point to Tesla having significant demand issues in the US.
Tesla’s global sales came about 50,000 units below expectations, which the company blamed on the production changeover of Model Y, its most popular model by far.
However, production is now back up to normal in Q2, and Tesla is clearly having issues selling the updated Model Y.
The automaker has no backlog of orders for the new Model Y and vehicles are already piling up in inventory:
We reported last week that Tesla employees wrote an open letter calling for Elon Musk’s removal as CEO due to the damage he has caused to the brand.
In the letter, the employees confirmed Tesla’s demand issues, saying that thousands of new Model Ys are now sitting unsold on lots in the US.
Electrek’s Take
This is not a great sign for Tesla. These are end-of-quarter level incentives when we are just about halfway through the quarter.
And that’s just in the US, where Tesla’s sale performance is more opaque.
In Europe and China, where we know for a fact that Tesla is struggling with sales, the automaker is virtually offering 0% financing on its entire lineup.
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The electric box van experts at Harbinger announced a new, EREV version of their medium-duty van that pairs a big battery with a small, gas-powered ICE engine to offer fleets that are hesitant to electrify a massive 500 miles of autonomy on a single charge + tank.
The American truck brand is putting its latest $100 million raise to good use, developing a cost-competitive EREV chassis that marries a low-emissions 1.4L inline four-cylinder gas engine with a close coupled 800V generator sending power to a 140 or 175 kW battery for up to 500 miles of fully loaded range. More than enough, in other words, to meet the needs of just about any fleet you can think of.
That’s a good thing, too, because medium-duty trucks are put to work in just about any circumstance you can think of, as well – a fact that’s not lost on Harbinger.
“Medium-duty vehicles serve an incredibly diverse range of applications, just like the fleets and operators that rely on them, ” explains John Harris, Co-founder and CEO, Harbinger. “There are some fleets whose needs simply can’t be met with a purely electric vehicle—and we recognize that. Our hybrid is designed for use cases and routes that go beyond what an all-electric system typically supports. The series hybrid delivers the benefits of an electric drivetrain, along with the added confidence of a range extender when needed.”
In addition an up-front cost that should make it an attractive prospect for fleet buyers, the new Harbinger EREV pack performance that should made it attractive for its drivers, too. The new chassis’ electric powertrain delivers 440 hp and 1,140 lb-ft of tq for quick acceleration into traffic and smooth running, even under load. Charging performance is also quick, with the ability to get the big battery from 10-80% charge in just under an hour on a 150 kW port.
You’ve heard all this before
If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This medium-duty chassis was first shown last year, making its debut under a Thor Class A motorhome concept that we covered in September. That vehicle promised the same great EREV range and capability to a market that values independence and spontaneity more than most, and bringing those values to a medium-duty commercial market that’s lapping up “messy middle” propaganda from Shell NACFE is just smart business.
The new Harbinger chassis’ batteries are manufactured by Panasonic. No word on who is making the 1.4L ICE generator, but my money’s on the GM SGE four-cylinder last seen in the gas-powered Chevy Spark. You guys are smart, though – if you have a better guess who the supplier might be, let us know in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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Environment
Trump wants coal to power AI data centers. The tech industry may need to make peace with that for now
President Donald Trump wants to revive the struggling coal industry in the U.S. by deploying plants to power the data centers that the Big Tech companies are building to train artificial intelligence.
Trump issued an executive order in April that directed his Cabinet to find areas of the U.S. where coal-powered infrastructure is available to support AI data centers and determine whether the infrastructure can be expanded to meet the growing electricity demand from the nation’s tech sector.
Trump has repeatedly promoted coal as power source for data centers. The president told the World Economic Forum in January that he would approve power plants for AI through emergency declaration, calling on the tech companies to use coal as a backup power source.
“They can fuel it with anything they want, and they may have coal as a backup — good, clean coal,” the president said.
Trump’s push to deploy coal runs afoul of the tech companies’ environmental goals. In the short-term, the industry’s power needs may inadvertently be extending the life of existing coal plants.
Coal produces more carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour of power than any other energy source in the U.S. with the exception of oil, according to the Energy Information Administration. The tech industry has invested billions of dollars to expand renewable energy and is increasingly turning to nuclear power as a way to meet its growing electricity demand while trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that fuel climate change.
For coal miners, Trump’s push is a potential lifeline. The industry has been in decline as coal plants are being retired in the U.S. About 16% of U.S. electricity generation came from burning coal in 2023, down from 51% in 2001, according to EIA data.
Peabody Energy CEO James Grech, who attended Trump’s executive order ceremony at the White House, said “coal plants can shoulder a heavier load of meeting U.S. generation demands, including multiple years of data center growth.” Peabody is one of the largest coal producers in the U.S.
Grech said coal plants should ramp up how much power they dispatch. The nation’s coal fleet is dispatching about 42% of its maximum capacity right now, compared to a historical average of 72%, the CEO told analysts on the company’s May 6 earnings call.
“We believe that all coal-powered generators need to defer U.S. coal plant retirements as the situation on the ground has clearly changed,” Grech said. “We believe generators should un-retire coal plants that have recently been mothballed.”
Tech sector reaction
There is a growing acknowledgment within the tech industry that fossil fuel generation will be needed to help meet the electricity demand from AI. But the focus is on natural gas, which emits less half the CO2 of coal per kilowatt hour of power, according the the EIA.
“To have the energy we need for the grid, it’s going to take an all of the above approach for a period of time,” Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centers, said during a panel discussion at conference of tech and oil and gas executives in Oklahoma City last month.
“We’re not surprised by the fact that we’re going to need to add some thermal generation to meet the needs in the short term,” Miller said.
Thermal generation is a code word for gas, said Nat Sahlstrom, chief energy officer at Tract, a Denver-based company that secures land, infrastructure and power resources for data centers. Sahlstrom previously led Amazon’s energy, water and sustainability teams.
Executives at Amazon, Nvidia and Anthropic would not commit to using coal, mostly dodging the question when asked during the panel at the Oklahoma City conference.
“It’s never a simple answer,” Amazon’s Miller said. “It is a combination of where’s the energy available, what are other alternatives.”
Nvidia is able to be agnostic about what type of power is used because of the position the chipmaker occupies on the AI value chain, said Josh Parker, the company’s senior director of corporate sustainability. “Thankfully, we leave most of those decisions up to our customers.”
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said there are a broader set of options available than just coal. “We would certainly consider it but I don’t know if I’d say it’s at the top of our list.”
Sahlstrom said Trump’s executive order seems like a “dog whistle” to coal mining constituents. There is a big difference between looking at existing infrastructure and “actually building new power plants that are cost competitive and are going to be existing 30 to 40 years from now,” the Tract executive said.
Coal is being displaced by renewables, natural gas and existing nuclear as coal plants face increasingly difficult economics, Sahlstrom said. “Coal has kind of found itself without a job,” he said.
“I do not see the hyperscale community going out and signing long term commitments for new coal plants,” the former Amazon executive said. (The tech companies ramping up AI are frequently referred to as “hyperscalers.”)
“I would be shocked if I saw something like that happen,” Sahlstrom said.
Coal retirements strain grid
But coal plant retirements are creating a real challenge for the grid as electricity demand is increasing due to data centers, re-industrialization and the broader electrification of the economy.
The largest grid in the nation, the PJM Interconnection, has forecast electricity demand could surge 40% by 2039. PJM warned in 2023 that 40 gigawatts of existing power generation, mostly coal, is at risk of retirement by 2030, which represents about 21% of PJM’s installed capacity.
Data centers will temporarily prolong coal demand as utilities scramble to maintain grid reliability, delaying their decarbonization goals, according to a Moody’s report from last October. Utilities have already postponed the retirement of coal plants totaling about 39 gigawatts of power, according to data from the National Mining Association.
“If we want to grow America’s electricity production meaningfully over the next five or ten years, we [have] got to stop closing coal plants,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC’s “Money Movers” last month.
But natural gas and renewables are the future, Sahlstrom said. Some 60% of the power sector’s emissions reductions over the past 20 years are due to gas displacing coal, with the remainder coming from renewables, Sahlstrom said.
“That’s a pretty powerful combination, and it’s hard for me to see people going backwards by putting more coal into the mix, particularly if you’re a hyperscale customer who has net-zero carbon goals,” he said.
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