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Another German Carmaker Just Dropped Formula E

BMW on Tuesday announced that it is officially bowing out of the ABB Formula E Championship after competing in the series for seven seasons (as a factory team since season five). The automaker’s withdrawal is not effective immediately, but will finalize at the end of the upcoming season, which kicks off next month with a double header in Chile.

It’s less of a swift pull of the plug and more of a sunset of its Formula E operations. Still, the news is a setback: BMW is the second team to announce its departure this week, following an earlier announcement from Audi that it’s withdrawing from Formula E at the end of the upcoming season.

BMW Group struck a dramatic tone in its press release, stating that all opportunities to apply knowledge gained on the track to production EVs has been exhausted. In other words, the well has run dry and there is no point in sticking around. Here’s a clip from BMW’s announcement:

The same engineers who develop the drivetrains for electric production vehicles are also responsible for the drivetrains in the race cars. Examples of the successful transfer of technology between the Formula E project and production development include new findings regarding energy management and energy efficiency, the transfer of software for power electronics from racing to production, and an improvement in the power density of the e-motors.

The statement broadly outlines what it was that BMW transferred from track to showroom as a result of its racing in Formula E, and it briefly mentions the team’s modest record in the series. But the press release mostly seems sponsored by the letter “P” as in “production.”

BMW emphasized that its decision comes on the heels of a realignment and renewed commitment to increase EV production. There just seems to be little return on investment in the series; the company said that investment is better directed elsewhere.

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Cost has been a recent concern for the teams, and that prompted the FIA to draft regulations addressing this. But even with upcoming regulations mandating significantly lower operating costs, it seems BMW would rather its resources go to meeting the EV goals.

That’s not going to be easy. BMW wants one million of its EVs on the road by the end of next year, and seven million by the end of the decade. That’s a lot of blue-and-white roundels, let alone a lot of EVs.

Now we have two German marques leaving FE, but at least Mercedes is still sticking around. The upcoming season will be the first to have FIA World Championship status, so maybe the BMW i Andretti team will rally near the end.

Europe Is Getting Its Shit Together On EVs And Hybrids

Employees wearing protective masks against the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, work along the assembly line that produces both the electric vehicle Renault Zoe and the hybrid vehicle Nissan Micra, at Flins-sur-Seine, the largest Renault production site in France on May 6, 2020

From the Prius to Tesla, America got an early lead in buying up hybrids and all-electric cars. First China started stepping past us with affordable EVs, and now it’s Europe that’s getting its act together. Europe is on track to triple sales of plug-in vehicles, thanks to strict regulations rolling in while we are getting lax.

Here are the numbers, as the Financial Times reports:

One in 10 new cars sold across Europe this year will be electric or plug-in hybrid, triple last year’s sales levels after carmakers rolled out new models to meet emissions rules, according to projections from green policy group Transport & Environment.

The market share of mostly electric cars will rise to 15 per cent next year, the group forecasts, as carmakers across the continent race to cut their CO2 levels. The projections are based on sales data for the first half of the year, as well as expected increases as manufacturers scramble to comply with tightening restrictions in 2021.

“Electric car sales are booming thanks to EU emissions standards,” said clean vehicle director Julia Poliscanova. “Next year, one in every seven cars sold in Europe will be a plug-in.”

Under the rules, carmakers must reduce the average emissions from their vehicles to 95g of CO2 per km or face fines that could run into billions of euros.

The new penalties have spurred carmakers to rush in new all-electric models, in particular the ID series from VW. A top exec has dropped off from VW and factories have been scrambling to get IDs into customers’ hands and EU penalties off the company’s back.

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Meanwhile in the U.S., we can’t even get consistent regulations because the Trump administration is trying to backtrack, leaving it up to the states to put pressure on automakers to get zero-emissions cars onto dealership lots.

It’s not a competition, but it’s worth bringing up the contrast between the States and the EU because it shows that regulations work! Maybe not as much in the world of plug-in vehicles as a spike in gas prices would do, but I’ll take what I can get.

Vanderhall Is Finally Making A Four-Wheeled Vehicle And It’s An Electric Off Roader

If you’ve been following American automotive manufacturing for the last decade, you might have heard of the tiny Utah-based three-wheeled roadster builder Vanderhall. The company has been building front-wheel drive three-wheeled roadsters powered by GM drivetrains since 2012, with its first electric model, the Edison, coming in 2018. This week the company announced it would be doubling the size of its factory to produce the new electric off-road buggy called Navarro by 2022.

This little machine actually looks quite intriguing. I’m not sure if it will be road legal, based on the wheels that stick out well past the fenders, so perhaps this will be taking on the side-by-side market. Vanderhall is being a bit cagey on the details here, as the finished product is still two years away, but we know that it will be electric and that’s about it.

We can surmise that this buggy will have four wheel drive, perhaps with a quartet of the motors found in the Edison, which provide 52 kW each. With two of these motors, the 1400 pound Edison cranks out a 4.4 second 0-60 time. It also means the individual motors can torque vector like nobody’s business. Individual wheel control in an off-road environment sounds like a dream come true.

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One thing I’m really excited about, which you can tell from the top shot, is that the Navarro has holes in its doors! If the Navarro can undercut Ford’s Bronco (it should), it might officially be the cheapest vehicle with holes in its doors!

I will be curious to see how electric off-roading takes off in the near future. Obviously range anxiety becomes a bit more of an issue when you’re 70 miles from nowhere, but perhaps companies could start installing chargers at trailheads for both road going and off-roading vehicle needs ahead of the surge in demand.

I’d really like to give this a try, because I cannot imagine how awesome it would be to get way off the beaten trail into the middle of the wilderness and hear the birds chirping and the wind rustling through the trees. Silent and low-impact rock crawling sounds like my kind of fun time.