For season two of the FIA Formula E championship, the governing body has allowed for motor changes… And what changes there were. Walking down the pit lane at Donington I noticed a variation in motors and their installation packaging amongst the sub-frame. Here are the powertrain changes.
Mahindra Racing were the first to announce publicly their new power train ideas. The M2Electro sees newly revised motor internals include the magnet and the coil of wire changed to improve performance. They have worked closely with McLaren to improve efficiency and performance as well as using the newly updated Inverter from McLaren; which is still fairly bulky sitting on top of the battery. This will act as the distributor to send power to sections of the car, as well as convert the direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC). This then runs into the motor, fed by Orange cables, which can assist as much as the chassis in improving stability and performance.
The increase in performance has resulted in a quicker accelerating car with more torque (raised from 130 to 150Nm) and a higher rev range to help extract he extra power.
Venturi was also a team to announce the car's power train publicly. In contrast, Venturi has a new powertrain of the car and redesigned gear casing. There new motor is tiny compared to its rivals but is still able to rev to 20000rpm with an extra 15Nm of torque to the McLaren version from season one.
Audi ABT is running the new Omnigear gearbox which sees just one gear, which portrays a very high pitch sound. China Racing also run the same gearbox but have had issues on the second day of testing. The single gear gearbox can provide better acceleration as well as extract more revs, but is prone to failures due to the high rev range and stress mounted on its inner components. ABT Audi told me it will be fine, as long as the drivers don’t over rev, which can harm is internals.
Audi ABT is also using a new motor which has been specifically designed by German company Schaeffer Group. It's been heavily upgraded to the McLaren one which also sees a slight change in the suspension set up. The case and magnet are the areas where Schaeffer have concentrated most.
At Andretti, I noticed its new tiny inverter sitting on the battery. It’s a very small design by any means, with its sloping cover, it was the smallest by far. This suggests Andretti have gone for a different method for its internals.
Unfortunately, Andretti has struggled with its power conversion, and only set one flying lap over the initial test.
Team Aguri are the only team to be using season one technology, but there is a reason. Mark Preston CEO of the team said, “We are using season one power train for our benefit, it’s tried and tested”. This, therefore, means Team Aguri are using the older McLaren e-motor electronics and inverter from season one. Team Aguri will be hoping to make hay whilst the other teams are still finding their feet.
E.dams were setting the time sheets alight on both days of testing, which is thanks to a newly updated motor. It’s unknown to what updates the motor has but are working “very nicely with each other” E.dams tell me. The car was one of the fasted over the first four days.
Dragon Racing, Virgin Racing and Trulli are also running new motors but have been very secretive about them. Trulli has had many issues with the new Motomatica JT-01 and was absent from the first test due to a delay with parts. On the last day, Trulli made an appearance and struggled with hardware problems, but insist they will persevere with the new unit. Virgin and Dragon have both said they are “happy” with the performance of their cars, of which both run the new McLaren ECU