- Nissan plans to bring its e-4orce AWD tech into Formula E
- Formula E may in turn grow to be a testbed for performance AWD
- Battery tech will stay divergent between production and racing
Nissan’s Formula E race automobile is wearing the e-4orce badge for the primary time this 2023/24 season.
Yes, that’s the identical badge you would possibly find on a 2024 Nissan Ariya—a badge that you just’re more likely to see far more of on performance-focused Nissan EVs in the long run.
While Nissan’s street cars and race cars have little in common today, Nissan sees them potentially meshing more in the long run—and learning from one another, as Green Automotive Reports learned in a conversation with Nissan Formula E team principal Tomasso Volpe finally weekend’s Formula E race in Portland.
Volpe is the team principal for Nissan’s team, which he likened to being the CEO of an organization while also implementing all of the supporting operations. And he actually sees Nissan’s Formula E and production Nissan EV programs getting closer together.
The reply might not be so surprising considering his employer stands in stark contrast to a line of naysayers who’ve dropped out of Formula E, like BMW, Audi, and Mercedes. Nissan this spring became the primary manufacturer to join Formula E’s Gen 4 era, which can run through 2030.
2023 Nissan Ariya e-4orce
2023 Nissan Ariya e-4orce
2023 Nissan Ariya e-4orce
Efficiency and regen are on the core
The whole lot modified already for Gen 3, because the cars became lighter, faster, and far more powerful, with as much as 600 kw of brake recuperation because of the inclusion of recent front motors—already used for that, but as a result of be employed for forward motion in a Gen 3.5 upgrade next season.
Volpe told Green Automotive Reports that in the beginning, what the team has already learned in greater than a season of the Gen 3 automobile, ahead of those changes, is methods to manage vehicle dynamics and energy use and recovery together. With regenerative braking, and a technique around it, built into the race, if you happen to weren’t regenerating in any respect, you’ll finish around 60% of the whole race length.
“Where now we have improved so much is within the management of the vehicle efficiency—what you may achieve with all of the software tools that you just develop, and the control systems for the vehicle dynamics,” said Volpe. “Configuring the dynamics has improved so much. It’s not that we’ve found more energy, it’s that we use energy a lot better.”
“Yes, we put e-4orce on the automobile already this yr to begin promoting it, to be honest; it’s a branding exercise,” Volpe admitted. But he quickly added: “Next yr there might be moments where you should utilize all-wheel-drive technology within the automobile, and for that, yes, we’re using some expertise from Nissan.
Nissan Formula E automobile, at Portland, 2024
Ariya e-4orce schools Formula E…which schools future GT-R?
“So now we have a number of the engineers who’ve developed e-4orce to advise us methods to use all-wheel drive in probably the most efficient way…methods to maximize the efficiency of the all-wheel drive,” he explained.
For now, Formula E cars don’t even use the front motor for tractive (forward) power yet. But they do use it for regenerative braking—and Nissan is already in a position to tap into a few of its chassis know-how in that respect.
Nissan has emphasized that e-4orce was derived from work that began with its GT-R supercar. Likewise, senior VP and chief planning officer Ponz Pandikuthira confirmed to our companion site Motor Authority that Formula E will function a testbed for next-gen GT-R development.
Next yr will bring some control strategies gleaned from the dynamic control of regenerative braking, utilized in Nissan production models just like the Ariya employing e-4orce. Hardware-wise, a brand new gearbox might be “massively improved, because of some ideas and solutions suggested by advanced R&D in Japan,” and that may bring the team one other boost in performance and efficiency.
2023 Nissan Ariya e-4orce
After which comes Gen 4, which is anticipated to introduce constant all-wheel drive, whereas Gen 3.5 will offer traction from the front wheels a number of the time. “So for us we are able to apply e-4orce for the entire race then, and for us all-wheel drive is a fundamental technology for electric vehicles,” said Volpe.
Chassis control and dynamics because it pertains to which might be a part of Nissan’s core business, he says, so having an all-wheel-drive vehicle will give Nissan the chance to transfer so much more knowledge each ways.
Real-world crossover for Formula E
While this seems like a quite harmonious meshing of racing, R&D, and EV development—one which Porsche, for example, also sees—that’s not the best way that several other big automakers have gone. Audi, BMW, and Mercedes were among the many automakers exiting Formula E just before the present Gen 3 arrived for the 2022-2023 season.
Each of those automakers had a variety of reasons, but at one point or one other, each has ultimately suggested that there was a comparatively low level of technology transfer back to production vehicles. After seven years in Formula E, BMW sounded probably the most pessimistic on the prospects when it announced it might be dropping out after the 2020-2021 season. “In relation to the event of e-drivetrains, BMW Group has essentially exhausted the opportunities for this manner of technology transfer within the competitive environment of Formula E,” the corporate said.
Audi confirmed its departure a short while later, in 2021, and pointed to other varieties of motorsport, just like the Dakar Rally, as a strategy to “further develop our expertise in the sphere of electrical mobility under extreme conditions,” and Mercedes merely noted that the choice was made to refocus resources on EV development.
Nissan Formula E automobile, at Portland, 2024
Battery tech must be very different
Not every technology here is relevant to production EVs—even performance ones—the team boss admits. The battery is the plain example, since it’s such a special use case. Getting through the race with no component failure is the target, not getting the battery pack to last 150,000 miles or more as in a production EV.
Although even here there could also be some lessons good for taking to EVs set to assert track time. “The predominant issue that now we have with the battery is the temperature, and to attempt to get the battery all the time in the precise window to be sure that we use many of the energy in probably the most efficient way. That is the predominant challenge on the subject of the battery greater than the rest; the remaining is sort of consistent within the BMS.”
Formula E teams operate under a special set of priorities. They’ll run the battery all the best way as much as 73.5 degrees C and still be reasonably efficient in extracting energy from it, but they’d higher be certain the temp won’t keep rising, because at 74 degrees it’s dead and won’t be revived for the race. With around 55 degrees on up considered the best range for the battery, the teams and Formula E itself give you a technique on where to begin—specifically, 42-45 degrees for last Saturday’s race that the pit crew was then preparing for.
Volpe noted that sometimes inside Formula E races you see cars with a better percentage of energy left at the tip of the race, while they hadn’t actually been pushing a lot to recuperate positions in the previous few laps. That’s a signal the battery temperature wasn’t managed well.
Then again, engineering insights from the inverter, gearbox, and motor can all be useful for production models. So can insights from advanced materials like carbon fiber.
Nissan Formula E automobile, at Portland, 2024
Formula E leaning on software for gains, drivers for wins
This yr, the massive efficiency gains are software ones, in line with Volpe. Energy management software is giving the team a far more sophisticated tool to make use of in the course of the race, for higher dynamic optimization of power delivery and regen.
“By regulation, in theory, you could possibly rewrite the entire software of the automobile from one race to a different. In fact the core software stays the identical, but there are little tools we use; some are tools that hook up with the software within the automobile and these are repeatedly updated.”
Nissan’s engineers prefer to think that they’ve a new edition of the software for each single race. But it surely does should be set prematurely of the race itself. The FIA reviews the whole code, aside from offline tools and whatever is used for data evaluation.
But a lot of it in Formula E still rests on the motive force—as seen at Portland where the consequence of the race got here right down to easy driver error and one not quite following the racing line he’d intended, clipping the grass, and spinning out.
I’ll leave you with an image you will just must imagine, as contained in the workings of its pit crew Nissan doesn’t need to let onto any photographic secrets: On site, at pit lane and just out of view of the traditional pit-lane tours, Nissan gave me a transient glimpse of a control room stuffed with screens and other people taking a look at layers of information, including driver simulations and warmth maps. Meanwhile, a team in Paris can be diving into data and advising on various scenarios.
2024 Nissan GT-R Skyline Edition
From Portland to Paris to Yokohama, Formula E appears to be working for Nissan as a distant testbed—and for Jaguar Land Rover, which has claimed real EV range gains from Formula E tech.
As I left pit lane I pondered: If those other automakers are getting what they need from F1, what technology, like solid-state batteries or deeper simulation tools, will it take to get other automakers back on board with Formula E? The race is on, but not everyone sees themselves in the identical race.
This Article First Appeared At www.greencarreports.com
