Formula E: Could electric race cars soon be faster than Formula 1?

With their sleek lines, smoking tires and thundering engines, Formula 1 cars are the fastest road vehicles of the last 50 years. But electric vehicles could soon become the fastest in the world, as battery-powered cars in the new Formula E championship make huge technological advances.

Formula E has just unveiled its Generation 4 car, capable of generating up to 600 kilowatts of power, the equivalent of 815 horsepower. This will propel the vehicle to reach speeds in excess of 350 kilometers per hour, compared to the current 320 km/h.

Formula 1 still has a slight advantage with top speeds exceeding 370 km/h. But Formula E cars already accelerate 30% faster than Formula 1, with the current Generation 3 going from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 1.82 seconds. And as their power and energy storage continue to improve, the day will soon come when Formula E will be faster at a track like Silverstone or Monte Carlo, according to Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds.

“In the years to come, the car will have the potential to run at a pace equivalent to that of a Formula 1 car, or even surpass it,” explains Dodds. “It’s more a function of physics than a function of our expertise.”

A major advantage is that electric motors are more efficient. Even in mainstream electric vehicles like Tesla, Kona or Ioniq, up to 90% of the energy consumed by the motor is used to propel the vehicle. Combustion engines can only convert about 25 percent of their energy into motion, with most of the rest lost as heat. Formula 1 has increased that figure to around 50 percent, adopting a hybrid engine powered by both gasoline and a battery that recharges when the car brakes. But a Formula E car is 96 percent fuel efficient, and almost half of the energy it uses comes from charging while braking.

Electric motors can generate maximum torque from a standstill, without wasting time changing gears to accelerate. The Generation 4 car features permanent all-wheel drive, with a separate motor providing power to each axle. This could potentially unlock even better acceleration, although it also depends on the grip of the Generation 4 tires, which are still in development.

Formula E’s weakness is the battery. When it started in 2014, drivers had to change cars midway just to finish the race. Envision Racing team principal Sylvain Filippi says Formula E today could build a 1,000 horsepower car that would beat Formula 1 on a lap. But the battery would die over the dozens of laps that make up each race.

“We haven’t yet managed to put the equivalent of 80 liters of fuel into a single battery. It doesn’t exist yet,” explains Filippi. “The beauty of fuels is that they are very energy dense.”

Formula E plans to switch from a liquid lithium-ion battery to a solid-state battery in the Generation 5 car, giving it greater energy storage at lighter weight. A Formula E car could then theoretically beat a Formula 1 car in a head-to-head race, says Dodds.

But even solid-state batteries will never surpass liquid fuels in terms of energy density, and Formula 1 could probably win more laps, according to Daniel Auger of Cranfield University, UK.

“I’m sure they could have a great run,” he said. “But I think we will still see that batteries would be a limiting factor.”

The question will probably never be asked, since the two series run under different rules. Formula E, for example, doesn’t swap tires during pit stops and has an “attack mode” inspired by the acceleration stars from the video game Mario Kart.

Manufacturers such as Porsche, Jaguar and Nissan will now begin improving the powertrain and energy management of their team’s Generation 4 car to make it as fast as possible before its racing debut in December 2026.

Some of these improvements could trickle down to the electric vehicles you see on the street. For example, Porsche is now integrating the direct oil cooling it developed for Formula E into its electric Cayenne.

Formula E’s speed and performance “prove that electric vehicles can do the same thing, if not more, than a combustion engine vehicle,” says Graham Evans of market intelligence firm S&P Global, “and yet, at the same time, they can do it in a much more environmentally sustainable way.”