FIA Adds Rome To Formula E 2014 Inaugural Season 91
New submitter muon-catalyzed writes "Formula E — the new eco-friendly forumula racing just secured a major european city. Rome joins a growing eco-racing scene after Rio de Janeiro agreed to be part of it in August. Additional cities are expected in the coming weeks, this should quickly lead to a solidified race itinerary, the FIA says. Having Rome onside won't get cars to the starting line any sooner, but it may underscore Formula E's advantages in noise and pollution over gas-powered leagues — when its cars can race around the Colosseum without creating a ruckus, other cities (and spectators) might just follow suit."
I've got an eco friendly vehicle for ya! (Score:1, Insightful)
I've got an eco friendly vehicle for ya!
How about a fucking bike.
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Re:I've got an eco friendly vehicle for ya! (Score:5, Funny)
How about a fucking bike.
So that's a bike without a saddle? I don't quite see how that particular modification makes it eco friendly, perhaps you can explain?
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How about a fucking bike.
So that's a bike without a saddle?
No, it's a bike with a banana seat. Which could be one of those long seats with the bars to hold it up from your rear axle, or it could just be a banana.
Allinol? (Score:1)
Ka chow!
Less noise? (Score:4, Interesting)
A well tuned sports car engine is a thing of beauty...hell, even the sound of an old 70's muscle car can bring a feeling of lust into your chest.
And I gotta say, the day they turn motorcycles electric...is the day a lot of people may give them up.
The roar and rumble of the engine between your legs is part of that feeling of freedom when you hit the open road.
I don't think an electric engine, with a mp3 player and an external speaker system will generate that same type of emotional enthusiasm....it may perform in a superior manner, but it just want "feel" the same....
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nah.. 99% of the fun is the crashes. F1 is too safe to be fun any more, and the competition itself is NEVER shown. get rid of the races, put the cars on a roller setup to see who built the fastest car, and show us the construction process. because it's not about the driver. it's about the cars and how they're built.
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Spoken like someone who doesn't know a thing about F1, and clearly didn't see the end of the 2012 season
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My Porsche 911 Turbo, had a bass note on it, that would easily set off car alarms when I drove by..that had them set too sensitively. That car was a thing of beauty and fun....sure, it got a whole 10mpg on a good day...but was worth every penny of gas I put through it before it died in Katrina....RIP.
Hardly a lower class hick ride....I'd hardly call a '69 camaro a lower class hick car....
It sounds like you might just be a bit jea
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Only for lower class hicks.
So the higher class hicks lust after what? Wine and cheese?
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while an electric engine is fairly quiet, don't discount the noise of the tires and the sound of the car travelling through the air.
I participant in a sport, where we have no engines, so most of the noise we make is from the wheels. Yet when we race in the 60-80mph range, we sound like jet engines. A little quieter, but there is still some noise... From a vehicle without a motor.
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I've never been to an F1 race, but I have heard that the noise is incredible.
Not been to a race, but I did go to a test session years ago when they used the V10s. Nothing prepares you for how loud those engines are :)
Extreme racing (Score:2, Interesting)
Racing at the very top is supposed to be about the most uncompromising cars possible. As Formula 1 doesn't allow all-electric vehicles it feels like a natural progression to have a separate league for the topmost machines in the world.
Re:Extreme racing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Extreme racing (Score:5, Informative)
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The last decade? F1 hasn't been close to "no compromises" since wheels with spokes fell out of favor, and mostly for good safety-related reasons.
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Re:Extreme racing (Score:5, Insightful)
Racing at the very top is supposed to be about the most uncompromising cars possible.
Maybe in the 80's. These days F1 technology is very much driven by road vehicle manufacturers & environmental concerns. For example, the current 2.4L engines (which year on year have been limited to lower and lower revs) are being replaced by 1.6L turbos in 2014, mainly as a result of pressure from manufactures such a merc & renault (and audi / VW, although they eventally decided against joining). If the majority of newly built road cars become diesel powered, F1 engines will switch to diesel. Similarly, if the majority of new road cars are electric, F1 will switch. F1 will do whatever the sponsors ask, and if that includes radically changing the formula, then so be it....
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Which is probably why, as the years go by, formula 1 seems less and less interesting to me. The main reason I used to watch it is precisely because it was about the peak of car technology. I watched it to see phenomenally powerful exotic cars that I would not see in real life, coupled with men with both the talent and balls to drive these machines to their limits. Sometimes on some very exotic circuits in far away places.
I loved watching F1 and Rally in the 80's, then in the 90's, but afterwards F1 just wen
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F1 is still at the peak of car technology even if the use of that technology is restrained. The most expensive supercars or any other race car are pedestrian in comparison.
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Yeah, but I think it has become over-regulated. Almost all the cars are identical, with minor tweaks here and there. I guess for me, I used to watch F1 for the technological/engineering feats, as much as for seeing Senna work miracles in the corners.
I loved seeing what method they used to gain an advantage. From "ground effect" skirts to seeing how much turbo power they could eck out of a tiny engine, to phenomenally high revving V12 engines, to one F1 car having 6 wheels, and another having a fan at the
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You know all the computer assisted driving has been gone for at least a year. That was definitely the worst part.
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Watching what are essentially glorified milk cars whizzing around quietly just doesn't stir my soul.
Maybe there are people who will like watching this. I will give it a go if it ever begins, but I'm not holding my breath.
Until this season, I would have agreed with you, but this was the most interesting season in F1 that I can remember. A battle for the championship that went down to the last race of the season, cars that, within the rules of the formula were continually tweaked and refined to eke out every possible advantage, and gobs of good close racing. Yes, there are only a handful of teams that have a realistic shot at the podium, but that handful all made regular appearances. It was not (quite) the Red Bull then ever
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Indeed. I think the greatest moment of this season was Vettel overtaking Jenson Button for 3rd with a few laps to go after starting last in Abu Dhabi. There was that split second when both cars wavered, and I thought they were going to collide. Vettel risked the entire championship to make the podium and eke out a few more points. That is the essence of a race car driver right there. Risking absolutely everything to win. Amazing.
Regardless, I would like to see a little more relaxation in specs that ar
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I don't know, but to me F1 looks like its turned into a glorified testing ground for technology to put into road cars.
That is what car racing has pretty much ALWAYS been.
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It's not necessarily only because of regulations, sometimes efficiency is an advantage in itself. Fuel is weight, and refueling is time, therefore fuel efficiency is a must if you want to win. Not to mention KERS which practically makes all F1 cars hybrids.
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These days F1 technology is very much driven by road vehicle manufacturers & environmental concerns.
Don't forget safety. The "most uncompromising cars possible" will tend to fail catastrophically. For example, cars that use underbody aerodynamics to "suck" the car to the ground generate incredible levels of downforce - until they get too close or too far from the ground and the downforce very suddenly disappears. There are very strict regulations on this kind of thing these days.
And of course, cost is becoming a bigger and bigger factor, with regulations designed to level the playing field, at least
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If they really wanted to level the playing field, they would all be driving the exact same car,
Congratulations, you have failed to understand non-spec racing completely. The competition is between racing teams which include the engineers, mechanics, pit crew, and yes, the drivers. The companies backing the cars are competing. The drivers are simply the public face and the driving part of that competition; you cannot do without them, but you cannot do without anyone else on the team, either.
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Of course they're not trying to equalise everything - it's a team sport, not an individual one. No matter what people think, it is fair that some drivers have better cars than others. And people often forget that one of the developers of the car is the driver himself.
But reduce the financial gap between the back and the front of the grid, and you have a more reasonable barrier to entry, a chance fo
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Thing is whatever engine they have it will perform at the limits of what the FIA considers safe, which is the real limiting factor. They could easily go much faster, racing drivers seem to have reached their limit.
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These days F1 technology is very much driven by road vehicle manufacturers & environmental concerns.
Nah, it's driven by the teams' desire to lower costs. "The most uncompromising cars possible" led to budgets in excess of $100M per year per team, which was unsustainable.
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around coliseum in rome streets? (Score:4, Interesting)
if they don't go 200mph, it's not really a contender.
wouldn't be so sure about the creating a ruckus part either. however, formula 1 is so rule suppressed that the tech isn't that interesting nowadays, if they have wider variety in E it might be interesting. but going 200mph is going to create a ruckus, electric or not.
and swapping the whole car at the pits? wtf dudes, just regulate the juice pack. easiest thing to regulate, everybody gets the same packs and that's the only fuel, after that it's a free for all. now THAT I would watch.
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Re:around coliseum in rome streets? (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't have to be going at 200mph for a race to be interesting. As long as everyone has a similar specced vehicle, it's the way drivers handle braking, acceleration, lines through the corners and overtaking that makes a race interesting.
I really enjoy watching Touring Cars and rallies, but don't find F1 as entertaining. Touring cars tends to have packs of cars jostling for position and not so afraid to get up close and personal with each other. Rallying is of course just spectacular with all the drifting and varying terrain. I think it takes even more skill than being a good F1 driver. DTM is fun to watch too, it's like a mix between Touring Cars and F1.
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You don't have to be going at 200mph for a race to be interesting. As long as everyone has a similar specced vehicle, it's the way drivers handle braking, acceleration, lines through the corners and overtaking that makes a race interesting.
I really enjoy watching Touring Cars and rallies, but don't find F1 as entertaining. Touring cars tends to have packs of cars jostling for position and not so afraid to get up close and personal with each other. Rallying is of course just spectacular with all the drifting and varying terrain. I think it takes even more skill than being a good F1 driver. DTM is fun to watch too, it's like a mix between Touring Cars and F1.
you're describing karting.
not formula. not a manufacturers competition.
touring cars have _some_ differences too and le mans cars for example are extremely interesting tech. in dtm and some other touring car racing they add weights if you're beating the others so that tunes the field down. and rally was much more interesting with the stupid b class cars.
however you might enjoy this new formula-e-mcclaren - because all the drive trains come from the same company. how the fuck is this supposed to advance techn
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I'm not saying that cars in F1 or rallies are all the same, I know there are differences among the manufacturers. I'm just saying that the thing that makes races interesting is generally the driving, rather than the vehicles.
I agree that single vehicle races are less fun to watch than multi-manufacturer races. I remember watching TOCA races a few years ago where some vehicles were diesel and some petrol. The diesels had much better torque and so powered out of corners better, but as a consequence they'd als
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Rallying, 100% agree.
Touring cars I just can't get into, though I am certainly not blind to the appeal. For me, it seems too easy to get away with driving like an idiot, bumping other cars, out-braking yourself and taking the guy in front out - you just don't see the same di
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You can generate extra downforce at lower speeds with suction fans [wikipedia.org] :)
The Red Bull X2010/http://gran-turismo.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Bull_X2011_Prototype_'11X2011 concept cars in Gran Turismo 5 use this concept, as well as very lightweight bodies and over 1500BHP. They are insane... if they actually created a race series with them, I expect quite a lot of the drivers would die :p
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Oops. X2011 [wikia.com]
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It was banned because it gave the a competitive advantage. It technically would make any car you added it to safer. The thing that makes the X2010 dangerous is the insane acceleration and top speed.
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I think that F1 has lost it's edge specifically because it seems that they aren't really on the edge of the speed envelope where technology really allows them to be.
I disagree. That's where the postage gets cancelled. There's no need to be going as fast as a car can possibly go. Keep the tracks interesting and the race will be interesting anyway. What they should be doing is pushing the handling part, which is something that we could all benefit from.
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I think part of the problem is that F1 cars are really, really fragile. No one takes risks because often just touching another car puts both cars out of the race.
The fact that they have open wheels comes into play before the fragility. Because of that, cars easily launch into the air, and we have seen it happen quite regularly. That's always been a part of F1 and open-wheel racing in general, and it's what makes the driving about finding clean lines around the car in front of you, while leaving a centimeter of space, instead of just bumping it out of the way like in touring cars. And it's what F1 fans generally appreciate.
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formula 1 is so rule suppressed that the tech isn't that interesting nowadays
On the contrary, I think it's fascinating the smart tricks engineers use to overcome the regulations. Mercedes double-DRS this year comes to mind, and the Red Bull's alternative version of the same concept.
and swapping the whole car at the pits? wtf dudes, just regulate the juice pack. easiest thing to regulate, everybody gets the same packs and that's the only fuel, after that it's a free for all. now THAT I would watch.
Agreed, car swapping sounds a bit crazy. But in terms of regulating the juice pack, that's effectively what we have now - there's no refuelling in the race, so there's serious tactical play going on all the time, trading off the weight of extra fuel with the ability to use the engine at max power for mo
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I was excited when I first heard about this series as I thought we'd see competing technologies competing on track. But this is just going to be a bunch of identical electric cars bought from a single source.
Meh.
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I think it's a chicken-and-egg problem. You have to have manufacturers interested in competing because an audience of fans (i.e. customers) exists. I imagine right now the electric/hybrid car buyer is not exactly a typical race fan. I know, I know a lot of people would like to have an electric car for a daily commute and then an ICE sports car for the weekend and special occasions, but, I don't think Prius and Leaf buyers are the typical race fan demographic. Yet.
For the electric/hybrid car customer it'
Same old same old (Score:3)
A quick visit to the FIA site revealed no information regarding the original source of the energy that powers these cars. Without that, any discussion of the "greenness" of this endeavour is entirely moot.
I'm getting really tired of this meme that electric cars are automatically green. They *can* produce fewer carbon emissions, but when all of the factors, (greenhouse gases emitted during manufacture and maintenance, as well as charging the batteries), are taken into account, electric cars may be no better than their internal-combustion counterparts.
Because they produce no tailpipe emissions, electric cars are probably a step in the right direction. I just wish they were promoted as such, rather than being touted as the 'OMG-that's-wonderful' answer to climate change and sustainability.
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personally had a brandnew lamp in the bathroom make TV-reception via antenna booster flaky
Sure, it's partly your lamp's fault, for having no filtering. But it's also your amplifier's fault, for having inadequate filtering, not properly isolating the amplifier stage, etc.
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Unless it was produced with and charged by 100% coal power or close to it, it will be "greener." In most places there is a huge difference.
Of course then they're going to fly the cars and the teams all around the world, completely obliterating that difference, so you've still got something to nitpick on and pooh-pooh electric cars with.
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Even if it's produced with 100% coal it will nearly always be more efficient that gas. An energy harvesting system that is several orders of magnitude larger, more complex, and capable of running much hotter is much, much more efficient than a 1.6L ICE. A traditional power plant generator can turn 40% of the energy in it's fuel into electricity. A combined cycle plant can reach 60%. The best an ICE can even theoretically do is about 35% due to material limits, an average car in average use is uses about
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More efficient yes, but without modern emissions controls equipment (which many plants in the US and China don't have) still more polluting. That's how nasty coal is.
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Formula has already done a lot in the development of efficient cars. There's a big difference between combustion engines, so even a mostly combustion-based race could promote emission reduction. And electric cars are important because once they become widely affordable our biggest dependance on fossil fuels will cease to exist. Switching to all nuclear will only require the political will.
not racing fans, i guess? (Score:1)
for most racing fans, the noise is a large part of the fun.
you don't hear people say, "do you remember the whurr
of the original prius. they just don't make 'em like they
used to." no! you hear "do you remember the 93 era
ferrari 12 cyl. what a scream!"
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Yep and pretty soon they'll stomp all over the ICE vehicles...not much ego and narcissism in defeat.
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Yep and pretty soon they'll stomp all over the ICE vehicles...not much ego and narcissism in defeat.
I'm not so sure... I mean, most people (myself included) who drive sports cars don't do it for ego, narcissism, or for some sort of penis competition. We drive our cars for the experience, the sounds, feeling and exhilaration when you put your foot down.
My sports car is fast, but not particularly so. A Tesla would beat it easily, as would most other modern sports cars. However when driving it it feels like you're going fast. I did 150mph in a modern German 4 door car, and you know what? I didn't feel like
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Says the guy too poor to afford a sports car....
Formula Flinstone (Score:1)
Old robbers don't change (Score:1)
As long as it will be run by FIA, it will have overcomplicated rules, biased race control and barely any sports values.