Formula One Management CEO Stefano Domenicali has raised the possibility of the series doing away with hybrid power in the future.
Yesterday the FIA confirmed the first details of the new chassis regulations which will be introduced in 2026 alongside the revised power units announced two years ago. Electrical power will contribute a much greater proportion of their total output, nearly as much as the internal combustion engine, which from 2026 will run on synthetic fuel.However Domenicali hopes that of the introduction of synthetic fuels is a success, F1 could eventually end its reliance on hybrid engines and run exclusively on combustion engines again.
“F1 has always been seen as having the lightest and best cars, so if sustainable fuels are successful we could go back to a situation where the battery is not needed any more,” he told CNBC.
Hybrid power was first introduced to F1 in 2009. The current V6 hybrid turbo power units have been in use since 2014.
FOM agreed a long-term sponsorship deal with Saudi Aramco four years ago. Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company is developing sustainable fuels for use in F1 as well as its junior series.
It remains to be proven whether sustainable fuels, also known as e-Fuels, can be efficiently produced in sufficient quantities for them to be a realistic alternative to electric vehicles. However Domenicali denied F1 is pushing an agenda on behalf of Aramco by promoting sustainable fuels over EVs.
“We are not lobbying for anyone, we are thinking of the best future for everyone,” he said. “It’s a very complex subject and we need to be more prudent than a lot of people that are talking without knowing the complexity of this transition.”
Six power unit manufacturers have signed up to participate under F1’s 2026 regulations, with Ford and Audi due to join the existing four. Cadillac has also expressed interest in joining from 2028.
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Kris
7th June 2024, 7:27
F1 ‘could find fuels are not needed any more’
That’s what we should be saying. This is a really bad plan for F1.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
7th June 2024, 7:38
battery technology is not even close to the energy density of gasoline. Not even close. If you want quality fast racing, they will be petrol powered, at least for anything longer than 20-30 minutes.
you will never see a battery powered car win the 24 hours of le mans unless it has an electrical generator that runs on fuel. Not in the next 20 years at least.
notagrumpyfan
7th June 2024, 8:03
Lithium-Air batteries come pretty close to petrol already.
And interestingly they are pretty similar in usage as well; you can only use them once ;)
spoutnik (@spoutnik)
7th June 2024, 10:41
And the weight remains on the car while gas ends up in the air
notagrumpyfan
7th June 2024, 10:56
Correct .
But then you should also consider that petrol doesn’t get above 50% energy efficiency, thus you need to start with up to twice the weight.
On average the same :p
Nick T.
8th June 2024, 1:03
The energy made to charge the battery also ends up in the air, unless it’s nuclear. It really depends on how clean the power grid cars are using to charge as to how clean the electric cars really are.
kuvemar
8th June 2024, 8:43
I would take that bet. It’s going to happen in the next 10 years, very possibly even earlier.
Markp
7th June 2024, 18:41
Fuels are needed. Always will. Engines also add so much in terms of emotion. Electric vehicles came before combustion but never moved forward as across various types of driving they are inferior. With sustainable fuels we can have 3 litre v12’s normally aspirated 20k rpm and cars 100kg lighter. Perfect for me and likely to the silent majority. For full nostalgia manufacturers can leave F1 apart from Ferrari and the rest could use Cosworth engines.
Nick T.
8th June 2024, 1:07
F1 should be saying we’re a sport, not a tech demo series for green energy. It’d be much better if most of the teams were run just by racing teams and not manufacturers so we didn’t have to continue this relevance charade.
notagrumpyfan
7th June 2024, 7:54
I’ll repeat here what I put in the round-up today:
And that’s only the energy usage part (fuel to motion) leaving out all the inefficiencies of transforming green electrical energy into synthetic fuels as mentioned in this article.
F1 would be greener if moving to full electric motors and adding a gettoblaster to create the yesteryear sound effects.
Tristan
7th June 2024, 8:11
I completely agree with Domenicali here, especially on this part:
It’s a fascinating industry and the technology (from what I’ve read utilising a combination of carbon capture, hydrogen and bleeding edge technologies to energise the synthetic fuel from that), while still very early shows a lot of promise. This isn’t just some Aramco pipedream, multiple players are coming together to involve each others technology including ExxonMobil and Repsol.
We can all just espouse our unknowledgeable opinions about how it’s doomed and they’re going the wrong direction. But at least they’re working on it. Synthetic fuels which does less damage to our planet would be incredibly valuable, and I’m all for it.
Will it be the answer? Is electric still the way to go? Really, nobody knows and time will tell. Anybody who pretends to is just kidding themselves.
Cranberry
7th June 2024, 8:32
Do don’t think hybrid/electric is going away, even if we were to reach that utopian vision, where all fuel is synthetic and we begin to clean the atmosphere to produce said fuels.
The torque/drivability an electric motor can give to the engine is something that’s here to stay, if even only in supercars/luxury cars.
I saw a interview where the owner of Koenigsegg explained the car Regera, didn’t understand half of it, but it was quite clear to me that electric motors can be used to produce unique drive trains.
BasCB (@bascb)
7th June 2024, 9:02
Hm, Tristan, I actually think that what the engineer Dominicali thinks is different from what he says as an official representative of F1 the company.
It doesn’t make any sense at all to do cars without batteries for the future, even if e-fuels work, can be made efficiently, cheaply and in large quantities. Because the battery, and regenerative braking etc. hugely improves the powercurve. Even a small battery allows the powerunit to “store power” when running at an efficient powerband and use it when accelerating at the lower efficiency, thereby hugely increasing it’s effectiveness.
The only reason to go without would be for PR – it would mean they are choosing something only for the “hey look, we still have fuel guzzling, loud-ish engines burning something, we could even do a V12 if you like” slogans. But it would be a faux classic engine, not one that is the best package to drive a car as fast as possible getting the most energy out of that fuel.
anon
7th June 2024, 11:49
Tristan, it really isn’t “bleeding edge” technology that is being used – the underlying industrial process is the Fischer–Tropsch method for synthesising hydrocarbons, which is about a century old. It’s old technology that’s usually only really been used when there was not an alternative source of hydrocarbons, given the inefficiency of the process makes it energy intensive and expensive to produce hydrocarbons that way – for example, when apartheid era South Africa had sanctions placed on oil imports, they used their coal reserves to produce synthetic fuels (and F1 fans should be familiar with Sasol, given they sponsored Jordan back in the early 1990s).
I take it that, for example, you’ve not read the Royal Institution’s assessment of the potential for synthetic fuels? They pointed out that it’s unlikely to be a practical large scale solution because it is fundamentally a highly energy intensive and intrinsically inefficient process, and is therefore only really likely to be of value in industries that can afford to pay a premium for fuel and cannot easily switch to electrification or other options.
Tristan
7th June 2024, 12:33
Ahhh not sure about that, I’ve read papers on the ExxonMobil MtG tech that are certainly not a century old. And obviously we have no idea about the ThyssenKrupp Uhde tech as it’s proprietry.
Do you know actually know what you’re talking about or guessing?
Tristan
7th June 2024, 12:38
When I say read I should say glanced over as I definitely don’t have the expertise to understand it all, and it may be analogous tech, not 100% sure, I just remember looking into it after Symonds talked about all moving forward at pace in testing.
As for inefficiencies for sure, but they can rarely be ironed out until a technology is scaled. Blue LED’s were once said to be impossible.
Alan Dove
7th June 2024, 8:14
The only form of sustainability that is important here is financial.
F1 and race promoter’s sole consideration is whether electric cars can generate the same revenue as ones which produce sound. F1’s success is a weird alchemy of several factors. Each factor alone may not generate significant interest, but combined together they create something that can generate billions. Sound generating cars alone don’t bring in fans, but combined with everything else, they are important.
So all this talk of environmental sustainability is borderline irrelevant in a technical context. They will be able create enough PR nonsense to cover any decision under the guise of ‘ environmental sustainability’. A 24 race calendar transporting just 20 cars around the world is so far off the end of the scale I don’t know where to begin. You could fit an entire kart grid on one container in comparison, yet I don’t see advocacy for karting being ‘green’.
Anyway, if the data suggests silent cars will collapse revenue, then you can be sure F1 isn’t going electric. If it doesn’t collapse revenue, then they’ll move. It’s that simple. Everything else is just noise.
Tristan
7th June 2024, 8:20
People are still banging the sound drum? I don’t think F1 would have got into half the cities it has if it still had the screen of a V8’s let alone the V12’s. Melbourne was just about canned because of it.
Yes the impetus is financial, simply because the damage to the environment is costing the world a lot on all fronts, fires, floods, rising sea levels, all over the world. And the switch to electric has been prohibitively expensive when considering logistics and safety.
Cranberry
7th June 2024, 8:26
Louder cars => fewer city circuits.
Hell yeah! Lets go!
Alan Dove
7th June 2024, 8:39
I didn’t specify V8s or V12s… I specifically said ‘sound’ because modern F1 doesn’t generate what many consider tuneful engines, but they still produce sound. Like I said, it’s alchemy. Alone it won’t bring in the money, because that’s evident from historic meetings, but if you remove it entirely from a successful F1, you risk collapsing revenue. Revenue is all that matters.
Aside of Formula E’s exclusivity agreement, F1 could move to electric far quicker than people realise. The reason they won’t is because they are unsure an Electric F1 will sell-out Silverstone with the current price of tickets. If there’s any sign it’d generate comparable revenue, they’d jump.
Alan Dove
7th June 2024, 8:38
I didn’t specify V8s or V12s… I specifically said ‘sound’ because modern F1 doesn’t generate what many consider tuneful engines, but they still produce sound. Like I said, it’s alchemy. Alone it won’t bring in the money, because that’s evident from historic meetings, but if you remove it entirely from a successful F1, you risk collapsing revenue. Revenue is all that matters.
Aside of Formula E’s exclusivity agreement, F1 could move to electric far quicker than people realise. The reason they won’t is because they are unsure an Electric F1 will sell-out Silverstone with the current price of tickets. If there’s any sign it’d generate comparable revenue, they’d jump.
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
7th June 2024, 12:41
What would be the consequences if F1 dropped its electrical component? Audi might quit, but does that really matter? Honda might also leave, though I doubt it, given their recent decision to stay due to F1’s popularity and exposure. Plus, they can’t use the sustainability argument since they compete in MotoGP.
Mercedes won’t quit, regardless of how much noise Toto makes. I can’t see him giving up a billion dollars. He’ll find a way to convince the Daimler board to stay, and convincing Ineos won’t be difficult either. Renault will be thrilled that the regulations, which they struggled to interpret to produce a competitive power unit, will finally be dropped. Andretti, along with Cadillac, will agree to any rules just to join the club. And, of course, Ferrari’s position is well known…
The sport has cornered itself due to Jean Todt’s politically driven green agenda. Billions were invested in these complex power units, only to have them frozen after less than a decade, impacting the sport’s competitiveness. Aside from the 2021 season, the hybrid era has been largely boring and unexciting.
It’s time to end the electric debate in the sport. Let’s leave something for the out of control woke politicians in the EU to cheer about.
The Dolphins
7th June 2024, 14:59
If F1 is to attract manufacturers and keep enthusiasts and fans happy I’d argue hybrid PUs are the only way of the future. If anything it would be nice to give the teams/manufacturers more freedom to develop the electrical side and provide a spec ICE since the plan is for everyone to use Aramco’s spec fuel all existing chemistry pairings the teams have had to eek out more power are moot.
Hazel Southwell (@hazelsouthwell)
7th June 2024, 15:06
It’s a real shame to have the CEO of a series that’s just released really interesting, exciting new technical regulations talk about walking back those technologies as though they’re negatives. F1 took a very long time to embrace or even consider marketing itself on the technical masterpieces that are the hybrid power units and I’m sorry to see that continues, at the top, even if it has now realised they are part of what shows why F1 is different from other series and can claim that ‘pinnacle of motorsport’ crown.
A pure combustion car will never compete with a hybrid for speed around a race track because it doesn’t have the torque out of the corners. That’s why all performance cars have hybrid elements now, not because of woke ULEZ-dodging or whatever anyone imagines Koenigsegg would care about. Braking, acceleration and responsiveness are all improved by the electrical element and it would lose performance to remove it.
Beyond that, synthetic fuels are a well-marketed lie. Even as a use of excess green energy (something we have a huge deficit, not luxury surplus of) it makes absolutely no sense to capture CO2 direct from the atmosphere only to re-elease it via an at-absolute-best 35-37% thermal efficiency, for a combustion-only race car. Making fuel takes an enormous amount of energy and fossil fuels only seem convenient because the earth put all that heat and pressure in itself, over millions of years.
Although I do see synthetic fuel as an option to make combustion racing a viable option in the future, it shouldn’t be confused with something that has broader applications. Even in series below F1 the price point is going to prove difficult for a long time – F2 and F3 were supposed to be going full synthetic before F1 did but are now moving those percentages.
It’s also hugely disingenuous of F1 to claim it is not lobbying for Aramco’s interests in this when it has very much proven to be doing so in the EU and when F1 staffers (Pat Symonds said this last month) openly admit to those meetings.
Coventry Climax
7th June 2024, 16:03
I think it’s even more embarassing to see mr. Domenicali actually tell the general public here that they are too stupid to have a valid opinion.
Paul (@frankjaeger)
7th June 2024, 15:15
I really think F1 needs to step away from desperately trying to be road relevant and attracting manufacturers, and instead concentrate on the competition and entertainment. Try and get manufacturers to want to be part of the sport because it’s such a spectacle and the competition is undeniable.
Matt Jones (@mattj)
7th June 2024, 15:52
Stefano is desperate to hear that sweet engine noise again!
Jere (@jerejj)
7th June 2024, 20:01
Not going for a non-hybrid V6 running on synthetic fuel type for the next technical regulation cycle is a missed opportunity.
Synthetic fuel makes sticking with hybrid technology more & more unjustifiable.
greasemonkey
8th June 2024, 15:14
Making a carbon neutral fuel does not need to be particularly efficient to make sense.
For example, solar in the Sahara making synth fuel or hydrogen on the spot. IOW, it can decouple both from power transmission infrastructure and infrastructure energy storage (since it is the storage).
Who cares if it is 40% efficient if the alternative is you were not going to collect the solar at all, or you were going to dump half of it at peak on the floor.
WRT cars themselves, accelerating mass matters, but is conveniently ignored by most efficiency comparisons. Mass is itself an inefficiency in a vehicle that accelerates and/or has friction as a function of mass. This means that trying making F1 cars lighter is inherently also an exercise in efficiency itself, tech wise, to apply elsewhere.
Electroball76
8th June 2024, 15:42
Atomic energy cell. The same “battery” could produce power for fifty years, so just slot it into successive car bodies.
David B
8th June 2024, 16:32
Yea, it should be rid of them in 2026! Vettel proved you can have small, light, loud cars with sustainable fuels. Should be pushing that instead of batteries.