Formula E’s Gen4 car could be too fast for its circuits

Filippi was joined in conversation at FOS Future Lab presented by Randox by Julia Pallé, Formula E’s Vice President of Sustainability. Between them they sketched a sport that has gone from punchline to pacesetter in 12 years, and they’re only just warming up.

Where does the petrol go?

A Gen4 Formula E car turns 97 per cent of its battery energy into motion at the wheel. A petrol car manages 20 to 25 per cent, while the rest disappears as heat and noise. “Instead of people like me doing long speeches,” Filippi said, “it’s a lot more powerful to see an electric racing car that is 97 per cent efficient going at 200 miles an hour.”

The 800-volt architecture in today’s premium EVs — faster charging, more range, lighter cabling — was pioneered in Formula E about eight years ago, when road cars were all running 400 volts, and no supply chain existed. Motors that once weighed 80 kilograms and filled a table now weigh 20 and make 500PS.

“Less than five years from early deployments in Formula E to road car,” Filippi added. “Which is very fast.”

The first B Corp sport

Pallé’s half of the story is how a championship that flies around the world stays honest about its footprint. In 2025, Formula E became the first sports organisation certified on the BSI Net Zero Pathway; in January it added B Corp certification — “the first and only global sport to receive the honour,” he beams. 

Just two seasons ago the Championship rethought its freight entirely and went from three planes to two — a 30 per cent cut in emissions. Every race venue must meet the international sustainable events standard.

Each car uses one battery for the entire season, and end-of-life cells are recycled — over 90 per cent of the lithium recovered without degradation. “Entertainment and sustainability are not seen as compromises,” Pallé said. “It’s actually levelling up all the elements.”

The Gen4 car goes further still: the first racing car that is 100 per cent recyclable and reusable, five years in the making.

A megawatt problem

Battery cells are improving so fast — Envision’s newest cells store 310 watt-hours per kilogram — that a Gen5 car could plausibly run “close to a megawatt of power. That’s 1,300 horsepower,” said Filippi. “Our main problem will be the circuits. The car will be so fast we will be quite limited on where we can race them, which is a fantastic problem to have.”

His simulations suggest that on a damp track, four-wheel drive would already make a Gen4 car faster than a Formula 1 car.

Save the V8 for Sunday

None of which, Filippi was at pains to say, requires anyone at Goodwood to surrender their heroes. “We are at a petrolhead event here in Goodwood. Driving electric cars to go to work is a way to save our V8s and V12s to do 100 miles once every weekend. What makes no sense is to use highly inefficient petrol cars for the boring daily commute.”

His team’s Race Against Climate Change programme puts the audience to work too: 470,000 fan pledges so far, and a plan to plant 500,000 mangrove trees in India’s Sundarbans over five years. It’s great to see Formula E branching out.

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Photography by Charlie Brenninmeijer and Sam Milton.