EXTREME E OFF-ROAD CONCEPT UNVEILED
The nature of the Extreme E electric off-road SUV racing series has been unveiled by co-founders Gil de Ferran and Alejandro Agag.
The championship, which is operated in association with Formula E, hosted a launch event on the river Thames in central London last week on board the Royal Mail Ship St Helena.
XE will hold electric SUV racing events in five remote areas of the world – the Arctic, the Himalayas, the Sahara desert, the Amazon rainforest and islands in the Indian Ocean.
The concept, which will begin in January 2021, has already been presented to nine “very serious” manufacturers, according to Agag.
“We’ve had very preliminary conversations with some, which have been really interesting,” he said.
“But we’ve even been fine-tuning the concept a lot until [recently].
“We are about to finish the sporting regulations and the technical regulations. When we have that, manufacturers need to really make up their minds and make a study.”
Entrants will use the same specchassis base underneath bespoke silhouette SUV racing designs, with limited powertrain areas available for development.
Technology developed for Formula E will feature on the cars which will be approximately twice as powerful as those used in the single-seater series.
The spec XE parts will be the base chassis, battery, suspension, ECU and software, as well as an FE powertrain motor.
The event format will be a series of head-to-heads over stages approximately five miles long, with a round-robin group stage leading to a knockout tournament to decide the event winner.
The drivers will race side-by-side, with XE organisers emphasising that it is not a rally format.
XE is aiming for 12 one-car teams and is targeting major manufacturers that produce electric SUV models as entrants.
There will be two groups of six teams, with the drivers in each group competing head-to-head in sequence.
Points will be awarded for each group race winner, with the final order of the group deciding the knockout match-ups in a seeded system – highest to lowest.