Alvin's Formula One Blog

Williams are to provide the battery system that will be used in the FIA Formula E championship which is set to debut in Autumn 2014. Williams Advanced Engineering, a division of the Williams group which commercialises Formula 1-based technologies, will partner Spark Racing Technology to design and assemble the units. The single seater fully-electric championship is set to start in September 2014 with 10 city centre races – eight of which have already been announced in the form of London, Rome, Los Angeles, Miami, Beijing, Putrajaya (Malaysia), Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. Bangkok is under consideration for one of the remaining slots.Williams’ work with battery storage systems began with its F1 programme following the introduction or Kers (Kers Energy Recovery Systems) in 2009. Since then, the outfit develops both battery and flywheel energy storage systems for both motorsport and non-motorsport industries. Read more..

Formula E is a new FIA championship featuring Formula cars powered exclusively by electric energy. It represents a vision for the future of the motor industry over the coming decades. The FIA Formula E Championship will be launched in 2014. It will run exclusively in major international cities and it has all the assets needed to reach a worldwide audience, becoming a bridge between the old and new era of industry and motorsport. When the news was first announced, there was a lot of disbelief about having an electric racing car pretending to be a racing car. I wondered as well how would a single seater racing car sound like. And how fast could it go? We have had electric racing done before and electric car competitions but at a world class level with real racing? Anyway, the promoters have released a promo video of their new series. The racing is still a long way away, first race is scheduled for 2014, the same year F1 goes through a huge engine change to 1.6 turbocharged engi...