BMW iFE18, 2018

BMW reveals Formula E car for 2018-19 season

Formula E

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BMW has revealed its iFE.18, the 2018-19 specification Formula E car it will race in the fifth season of the championship starting later this year.

BMW motorsport director Jens Marquardt said the power unit designers had been told to prioritise performance over road relevance.

“We told the production engineers designing the electric motor and inverter: ‘Forget about all the considerations you would usually have in development, and just think about performance, the greatest efficiency, the lowest weight. When we’ve reached that point, you can think about how to integrate that into series production later on’,” he said.

Antonio Felix da Costa and Alexander Sims will drive the two cars run by BMW i Andretti Motorsport. Andretti has competed in Formula E since the championship was launched in 2014 but is yet to win the championship.

“I believe we have the right partners, drivers and personnel in place to compete at the very top level of Formula E,” said Andretti Autosport CEO Michael Andretti.

“Everyone on both sides have been dedicated to the development of the new BMW iFE.18 and I look forward to seeing it in action. We are entering not only a new era of Formula E, but of motorsport as a whole.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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33 comments on “BMW reveals Formula E car for 2018-19 season”

  1. I like the front of this generation of cars, as much as I hate the rear! It looks so weird from behind

    1. And what is that exhaust pipe sticking out the back for?

      1. Todd (@braketurnaccelerate)
        14th September 2018, 15:51

        Not an exhaust pipe. It’s the rear crash structure, similar to F1’s.

        1. Interesting that they have made it look like one though! LOL

  2. I hate asymmetry

  3. I can’t tell if I’m looking at a racing car or a hot wheels toy.

    1. @dusty That’s how I feel about every futuristic concept. (have you seen the concepts for F1 in 2021).

      However, the main thing that needs to be resolved in Formula E is the performance. It’s still way to slow. It looks amateurish. But everything else is firmly in place for the category to be huge. I’d argue they do marketing more effectively than Formula 1.

      1. @dusty

        It’s still way to slow. It looks amateurish.

        Given that the cars have been heavily restricted for safety reasons and to take baby steps for costs, you could be forgiven for thinking they ‘look amateurish’ and also have their top speed restricted to around 185MPH iirc because the tracks are too tight.
        This is actually a very professional way of doing things and helps towards their growth and survival. F1 and other Formulas might be able to learn a few things. For years F1 was papering over the cracks with its loud noise then introduced gimmicks of its own.

  4. Not a fan of asymmetrical liveries normally, but that is not bad at all.

  5. Hands up if you saw the swoopy car, read the first couple of words of the headline and thought “BMW are coming back to F1 in 2021?!”…

  6. I rather like it. Usually I prefer symmetry but it looks really sweet; nice colour. It’s just a shame we don’t have BMW in F1 anymore as this would look really good on an F1 car.

  7. Holy Batman… those diffusers

    1. Batman was exactly what popped into me head as well :)

  8. Maybe i’m totally wrong on this but ever since they first showed off this car i’ve just got the impression that they started out wanting it to look cool & futuristic rather than looking at trying to make a fast, competitive race car.

    Not saying it won’t be a fast race car or anything, Just that I don’t believe that was there starting point.

    1. I think it is exactly what they wanted. Those couple of seconds due to aero do not matter. Formula E is not about aero.

    2. They don’t want much drag and downforce because they lack power. It’s not like they don’t care about aero, it’s the way they need it.

    3. The car won’t be fast, that’s not the point of the series.

      1. The cars are still pretty quick. Certainly quick enough that drag becomes an issue. They do not need to corner at high speed though so they do not need the high down force of F1.

    4. @stefmeister, one of the design goals that was given to the designers was to make it look “cool & futuristic” – Agag has said in the past that they deliberately wanted to produce a car that looked different from any other open wheel series, and has talked in the past about how he wanted the cars to “look more aggressive”.

      Aesthetic concerns, therefore, do seem to have been made a fairly important design goal, to the point where there are some components on the car where aesthetics seems to have been more important than functionality (such the twin wings over the rear wheels – when it was suggested for use in F1, Ducarouge’s wind tunnel testing showed that they were inferior in pretty much every regard to a single larger span rear wing).

    5. I’m wondering why they don’t have slick tires. I guess they could use the extra mechanical grip, no?

      1. I think the original reason was they wanted an ‘all weather’ tyre to keep costs down, and for practicality – it’d be a nightmare trying to do pit stops for wets/slicks in the pokey garages they have.

      2. @afonic

        More grip takes energy out of the batteries. We’ve already seen electric cars can be quicker than F1 on some roads for short periods with Volkswagen’s pikes peak car also winning at Goodwood and beatin 6 previous times by F1 cars. At the moment the technology is not there for highest power in long races. Williams made a swapable battery with both coolant and current disconnecting in one click, but they are still deemed too risky safety wise for a young vunerable Formula.

  9. I am getting excited about Season 5. I just hope cars will be as durable as the First Gen. There were so many contacts with limited damage to the cars.

  10. Looks pretty swish to me in a Manga kind of way.
    I’ve tried to watch a couple of FE races but the strange lack of engine noise and the lack of speed just kills it for me.
    Fingers crossed for the future though.

  11. Batteries included

  12. Ugly as hell.

  13. Those tiny brakes ruin the whole look. It looks like they took brakes from Fiat Panda or something lol

    1. @tov

      Only to old f@rts who get a hard-on over large brake discs for some reason. The braking also comes from energy re-gen, which is crucial in this Formula. Small brake discs means high-tech and effeciency is going on. Engineers would get hard-ons with no brake discs at all.

  14. Join a real series, BMW, come back into F1.

    1. F1 has nothing to offer BMW until the engine format changes, and BMW has little to offer F1. BMW has never made a V6 for racing or production and I hope they never do (there are rumors of internal research, but none resulted in any product).

      What I hope is that ACO pulls their heads from their bums, figures out a viable LMP1 spec and that BMW join for that.

    2. @jblank

      That comment might have made some sense 3 years ago. It’s incredible how fast the world has moved on in 3 years though. Every 6 months that pass, F1 is closer to needing to abandon any future ICE changes. F1 needs to go back to old fashioned engines for the novelty and ‘show’ asap and I doubt the big manufacturers will be on board just as they will abandon F1 the moment EVs on the road cross the threshold.

  15. With the speeds they get to and the tracks they run, the “diffuser” is just extra weight at the rear.

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