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A bold new vision for the future of electric racing was launched this week, and AUTOSPORT was party to the exclusive unveiling as FondTech revealed its E-11 racer.
The car is the baby of FondTech owner and ex-Renault, Ferrari and Tyrrell Formula 1 engineer Jean-Claude Migeot and his project manager Luca Gasparini, who has had notable success working on Audi’s uber-successful sportscar programme.
Their collective passion has led to a car which deviates from the conventional look of a single-seater and instead demonstrates an absolute purity of design, with its appearance almost wholly dictated by the freedoms and constraints created by utilising battery technology.
That means a high driving position with the three lithium ion battery packs built into the chassis for safety reasons. It also means a low rear wing and sidepods that help reduce drag and are possible due to the reduced need for cooling.
For Migeot and Gasparini the passion is obvious, and the car has earned the nickname ‘bambino’ (baby). There is also the sense that after two decades of working on and perfecting other projects, the complete ownership of the E-11 is a source of satisfaction.
Interestingly, both are refreshingly candid and open about the design, which is a “journey of discovery; our approach, but there are different [approaches to take].”
As Migeot takes the wheel on the journey from his Aerolab base to the FondTech facility – the two are sister companies – it is clear that his appetite, and that of the surrounding Bologna region, remain undimmed.
Passing by the Lamborghini factory, he talks of his time in F1 – including his role in producing the revolutionary high-nosed Tyrrell 019 made famous by Jean Alesi. Talk moves on to the E-11 and the gestation of a project that has been three years in the making.
Migeot (l) and Gasparini are very proud of their ‘bambino’
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“It’s a complete self-generated project, important for our company,” he explains. “We started with five projects, investigating which could be interesting because we are very single-culture in our core business, and these five gave us a wider focus.”
Migeot admits that the design is experimental, but says that the best way of launching a new technology is often to do something down those lines.
“The current F1, F2, F3 system is not a comparison; We are dealing with a technology that is just born. To compare it with something already established is not right. The way to grow it is maybe to do something different.
“I look back; There is the Schneider Trophy in aviation, when countries used to do races. The planes were too fast to land though, so they decided to use seaplanes and land on water.
“It is an example of having an object you would like to show and not knowing how to do it, so you come up with a tailored solution. It is similar for the E-11.
“When you do things, you never know whether its going to be good or just average. Its exciting to explore new territory, that’s for sure. It’s also exciting to see something that can transform the equilibrium. More than anything though, we are interested to explore.”
The sentiment resurfaces several times in the following hours, as Migeot and Gasparini saunter around the FondTech facilities and their E-11 model.
There are other features which mark the car as unusual. FondTech has opted to eschew any gears in order to save weight and make acceleration smoother – electric cars, remember, have a flat and therefore constant torque curve. That means no clutch and no need to keep the engine revs up through corners.
“Our approach – and again there are different [approaches] – is to have no gear changes,” Gasparini says. “There is only a reduction gear between the battery and motor, which can be adjusted by a mechanic, but is automatic in the car.
“The driver would have no gear change. No torque curve either, but great acceleration. This is typical of all electric cars – the torque curve is constant, so you have full power straight away.
“We don’t know the future, or even what it will be like to drive. It’s a different form of racing; as much about the journey of discovery and technical challenge as it is to produce the car.”
The attitude helps explain the many design quirks of the E-11, which give it its unusual appearance.
Three Lithium Ion battery backs in the floor power the E-11
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Rather than focus on a traditional single-seater concept to which technology is then shoved into, FondTech has looked at exactly what is possible and then implemented it.
As Gasparini puts it: “It is always the case that its easier to add downforce than it is to reduce drag. So we start from a minimal drag and can work from there.”
He moves on to the performance of the car, and the initial statistics sound promising… The three lithium ion battery packs, with a collective weight of around 300kg, produce around 300kw – around 400bhp. The output is limited to 170kw however, in order to facilitate racing for around 50 miles or 20 minutes.
Despite the limitation, the car should be capable of accelerating from 0-60mph in 3.2s and have a top speed of around 150mph. That, in part, is due to having around 70 per cent of the downforce and 60 per cent less drag than an F3 car – the target benchmark.
“It is a balance between performance and range,: Gasparini says. “The 300kw is more a limitation of the motor rather than the battery, which could create even higher power.
“We limit that first for safety and speed, and then for range. In theory you could have a qualifying set-up. Our compromise is 170kw to come close to F3 20 minutes allowing for safety and speed.”
There are further possibilities from FondTech’s electric approach. Each wheel is powered by an individual motor, which means massively improved energy recovery potential and also gives rise to the potential for independent control of each wheel.
“Each individual motor on each wheel contributes to the braking recovery, and sends energy back to the battery,” Gasparini explains.
“There is no local storage, but all four motors send energy back – it means we can recover so much more. Most of the braking energy is applied at the front, so if F1 cars have 40 per cent energy to use for recovery, we have around 100 per cent. Obviously you do not recover the full amount, but the amount you can try to recover is much greater.”
Such potential developments only arise, Migeot and Gasparini say, through a full commitment to electric technology. So was a hybrid solution ever considered?
“The hybrid we thought about, but it had a level of arbitrary we did not want,” he says. “You could say F1 is already hybrid, because it has a mix of fuel and electric – its hybrid to one per cent, lets say.
“Then you can have a hybrid to two, 10, 99 per cent – at the end you lose the focus on the electric. It becomes about the hybrid balance rather than the electric technology.”
Windtunnel work at sister company Aerolab has been extensive
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Migeot concurs. “It is as much a journey of discovery and breaking new ground as anything else. Number one, it’s involving our core technology, but it is also a very complete integration of our experience of chassis design and aerodynamics with a new area.
“At the moment we are looking at what is possible, but it can be changed to a different iteration – even now.”
Having constructed the model, which has been extensively tested in FondTech’s purpose-built windtunnel – something of a speciality for the company, which has also built tunnels for Dallara and Epsilon – the next step is to construct a rolling chassis, expected by February 2012 at the latest.
Testing then begins, and both Migeot and Gasparini explain with relish the idea of attending tests, discovering problems and devising solutions – what Migeot calls the “exciting part.”
After that, the car’s future racing hopes may hinge upon the FIA tender recently announced for an electric series.
“For [the] next six months,” Migeot says, “the FIA are not that important, but long-term, for sure we would like to be a part of it. They have put the tender out so hopefully before the end of the year we will know something more.
“So far we don’t know much about how comparable we are to other projects. But it will be good to have competition.”
This seems an unusual attitude – to welcome, rather than criticise, rival designs. But Migeot explains that the best way to grow and develop new technology is through competition.
“The times are very much pushing for it [the technology],” he explains. “Sometimes working on one project influences decisions on others; cross-thinking…”
It is that kind of honesty that makes it impossible not to like Migeot or Gasparini, or respect the integrity and principles of the E-11 endeavour – as radical as its appearance may be.
“It is always easy to be too early in something, making the mistakes for others,” Migeot says. “It is frustrating because we have taken risks, been very innovative.
“We are not saying this is the best solution, but it is a good enough base to showcase the technology and the possibilities. It is as much a journey of discovery and breaking new ground as anything else.”
And if the car proves fallible, and the design flawed? Migeot has an answer to that one too.
“I’ve been trained to face the truth by experience.”
AUTOSPORT