Formula E is not just an auto race with electric cars.
It's also the largest incubator for the future of electric vehicle technology.
In fact, the innovative electric vehicle technology that's developed for Formula E
goes straight into the development of consumer cars.
We traveled to Tokyo for the launch of Nissan's next generation Formula E car
to discover how important this motor sport is to the future of EVs, electric vehicles,
and why car manufacturers and energy companies alike want to get on the track.
The Formula E championship was created from scratch.
And when we started with this championship, nobody knew if it was going to work,
if it was going to be interesting. And we are all surprised to see, after four years, how much it has developed.
The powerful thing about motor sports, it motivates an organization, motivates engineers,
it motivates customers. Because it is just exciting to push yourself to the limit.
And Formula E allows us to push ourselves in that area.
Our company's determined to play a very active role in energy transition to drive our own activities,
but also participate in the society's journey to lower carbon.
Formula E really provides us a platform by which we can communicate to people about it and to engage them in a different way.
Because we're not trying to just sell EVs, we're trying to talk about all the problems that occur with EVs
and how we can solve them. So it's about bringing solutions to problems,
but through a platform that's exciting and engaging and fun. So it's a great opportunity for that.
As each team pushes themselves on the track, EV technology will continue to improve overall.
But there's one Formula E strategy that has the biggest impact on EV development.
First, in racing in general, when you push yourself to the limit, you really find out things and you learn things
that you don't necessarily learn from normal road cars. Specifically on Formula E, a lot of it is around energy management
and software, that we're going to learn a lot from that.
The DNA of Formula E is efficiency. It's not only about going for the ultimate lap time.
We have to look after the battery. We need to save energy, recover energy when we brake like an hybrid car,
for example. So the idea is that, in order to be quick, you need to find the right balance between recovering energy
on the braking, and then using that energy in the most efficient way possible.
Having an energy efficient car is one part of the equation. But in order to make the electric vehicle future
a reality, we need the infrastructure to support it.
With more and more moving to electric driving, clearly we are going to bring significantly more
Shell Recharge service stations with 350 kilowatt hour rear superchargers. So basically these are chargers which can charge a car which is built for that in five minutes.
The same way we want the adoption of EVs, we need partners like Shell which want the same thing.
With their over 35,000 retail outlets around the world, it's a great way to communicate why EVs are important and how EVs can be integrated into society again.
Interestingly, it's not just Formula E cars that are helping the consumer, but the more we see EVs on the road, the more it improves the Formula E cars on the track.
One of the unique aspects about joining Formula E for Nissan was, first, to bring everything that we had learned on the road to the track.
And that's generally the opposite of what we talk about when we talk about motor sports.
One of the most interesting examples is that most people focus on the hardware, the physical components that you see on the car.
But one of the things we talk less about is actually the software and the energy management system.
And Nissan, with over 372,000 vehicles sold, has had a lot of miles driven. And the actual software that helps control
and manage energy management systems in our road cars has been able to be used directly in the Formula E car,
which is, again, pretty exciting and helps us get an edge on the competition we think.
So I'm really excited about today because launching Formula E is pretty special to Nissan. But for me, as an engineer and as an individual, it's more than that.