FRANCIACORTA, ITALY—Last night, Porsche unveiled its latest racing car at its Italian Porsche Experience Center, midway between Milan and Verona. The 99X is the marque's new Formula E car, as Porsche becomes the first of that series' competitors to show off its Gen3 machinery before the start of season nine. That gets underway in Mexico City in mid-January, and good news: Fanboost is definitely a thing of the past.
As the "Gen3" name suggests, it's the third race car design to compete in Formula E, and we've come a long way from the original Spark SRT_01E, which only had enough battery capacity to complete half a race. The new car isn't quite as light as we thought, but at 1,874 lbs (850 kg) it's still a chunk lighter than the Gen2 car, and 220 lbs (100 kg) of that was from the battery.
"Overall, the new car is smaller, is shorter, shorter track width, more agile, it's lighter, more powerful. Compared to Gen2 where we had recuperation of maximum 250 kW (335 hp), we now have 600 kW (805 hp), which is more than double," said Florian Modlinger, head of Porsche's Formula E program.
That 600 kW is split between the front axle, which can regenerate up to 250 kW, and the rear axle, which can harvest 350 kW. However, only the rear electric motor is allowed to deploy power—the same 350 kW (469 hp), which more than one driver has now told me is more than enough to break traction from the new Hankook tires. And giving racing drivers cars with more power than grip often results in pretty entertaining racing.
The new car hasn't had the easiest of gestations, with reports of vibrations affecting the battery and problems with the in-race recharging, where short pitstops will pump energy into the cars at 600 kW—nearly double the most powerful DC fast chargers for road cars. These chargers are powered by energy stored in battery packs, using the same cells as the pack in each Gen3, but a shortage of cells means we might not see the boost chargers in Mexico.
As ever with Formula E, technology development is not unrestricted. Teams have to use spec batteries, chassis, and even the front electric motor is a common part across all the teams. But they have the freedom to develop motors, gearboxes, differentials, and the rear subframe, where Porsche found considerable weight-saving. And, of course, they're allowed to write their own software.
"And this leads to the fact that a key differentiator for competition performance will be the software engineering, as was in the past. Software is a big topic, but now it's even getting more emphasized," Modlinger said.
For example, the brake-by-wire system has to balance a mix of friction and regenerative braking at the front axle, and regenerating braking at the rear axle, without making the car unstable under braking or otherwise confidence-sapping for the driver. But putting the power down is as important, Modlinger explained, particularly given the bumpy nature of the temporary street circuits that Formula E uses.
reader comments
51