Formula E pit boost technology could bring ultra-fast charging for street cars in five years, says official

The sport, which won the Pioneer award at the BBC Green Sport Awards this week, began in 2014.

Drivers were initially required to jump from one generic car to another halfway through a race because of limited battery capabilities.

Now cars are in their third generation and are capable of having powertrain components tweaked and developed by the competitors, such as Nissan and Jaguar, to aid the ability of manufacturers to develop technology they can apply to their road vehicles.

Paolo Aversa is a professor of strategy at King’s College London, with close ties to motorsport. He says Formula E needs a big technology transfer moment.

“The whole point of motorsport is creating a competition for technologies that actually help the world advance,” Aversa said.

“The [Formula E] model still needs refinement – at the moment the amount of the technology to be spun out to end up in road cars has been limited.

“This is because to limit the cost of entry for new teams and manufacturers, the first few years they used standard cars, meaning there was no real technological development, no mechanism for creating competition of new technology, like there is in Formula 1.

“They have since started opening up innovation potential for teams – more and more components can be customised and implemented, and so this is when the competition becomes interesting. Truly then it can become a challenge which can accelerate the rate of innovation, such as batteries and charging stations.

“Formula E are on the right route. The big challenge is to come up with some bold technical innovation which will reshape transportation.

“I think we still lack the sort of big, bold solution that says: ‘Wow, what a quantum leap – without Formula E we would have never got there.'”