We dont seem to have a current Formula E thread here and it does not seem to inspire much discussion on the forum so I will just post this news here.
I say news as to me, despite given the move towards EV's in their core road vehicles, many of the manufacturers are bailing out of the Formula. Being one who rarely watches FE, and then only if I stumble upon it by chance, I am perhaps not qualified to comment with authority, but Mercedes / Daimler have chosen to join the FE quitters at the end of the 2022 season. (ISTR FE have a more off traditional season calendar spanning two years (ie 20/21, 21/22, 22/23 etc) so how it fits in Im not sure. It seems to say they wont be around for the 22/23 season.
*Edit: Just checked the FE Calendar and the 22 season runs from January to August*
Im also not sure whether it is an in-house factory operated team or a funded by Merc third party deal as were BMW with Andretti and in F1 speak Alfa with Sauber.
It seems like (for Merc) FE was only a short term Marketing exercise more to promote and establish the Merc EQ range as existing. I get the impression that FE is a fairly costly exercise, and the money is best focussed in other activities.
Anyway the news and more importantly, their reasons for quitting suggest that maybe FE is not the platform it was built up to be in terms of following. I guess also the news of F1 becoming more electrified is seen as a better vehicle to show in this case Mercs EV orientated progression in "EV" technology and skills.
One thing in my mind with all the "F1 is now our overall Motorsport core," it does seem to squash any thought of Mercedes quitting F1. (He says with confidence! Cue Merc to quit F1 news)
Anyway....
Mercedes has officially confirmed it will pull out of Formula E after the 2022 season,
....... saying it wants Formula 1 to be its sole factory motorsport focus – but keeping the door open for its FE team to continue without it.
After months of uncertainty over Mercedes’ Formula E plans, it emerged on Sunday – just hours before the team and driver Nyck de Vries clinched the first FE titles to carry FIA world championship status – that the Daimler board had decided against continuing the programme into the Gen3 era that begins with the 2022/23 season.
That decision was formally confirmed by the company on Wednesday morning.
Mercedes recently announced that its automotive business would be entirely electric by the end of the 2020s – a strategy that a Formula E programme seemed the ideal complement to.
But Markus Schafer, the board member responsible for Daimler Group Research and also chief operating officer of Mercedes-Benz cars, intimated that the resources required for this transformation meant Formula E could no longer be justified and that Mercedes’ ultra-successful F1 programme was a sufficient motorsport proving ground.
The Mercedes F1 team is now only one-third owned by Daimler, with team principal Toto Wolff and sponsor Ineos having the other stakes, and through a mixture of F1’s cost cuts, the team’s sponsorship deals and its prize money the amount of financial input required from Daimler has reduced substantially.
“At Mercedes-Benz, we have committed ourselves to fighting climate change at full force in this decade,” said Schafer.
“This demands the accelerated transformation of our company, products and services towards an emission-free and software-driven future, and to achieve this, we must give full focus to our core activities.
“In motorsport, Formula E has been a good driver for proving our expertise and establishing our Mercedes-EQ brand, but in future we will keep pushing technological progress – especially on the electric drive side – focusing on Formula 1.
“It is the arena where we constantly test our technology in the most intense competition the automotive world has to offer – and the three-pointed star hardly shines brighter anywhere else.
“F1 offers rich potential for technology transfer, as we can see in ongoing projects such as the Vision EQXX, and our team and the entire series will achieve net-zero status by the end of the decade.”
Bettina Fetzer, Mercedes’ vice president of marketing said “Over the last two years, Formula E has enabled us to showcase the Mercedes-EQ brand in a highly endemic and truly innovative format.”
“On a strategic level, however, Mercedes-AMG will be positioned and strengthened as our performance brand through its close alignment to our record-breaking Formula 1 team, and F1 will be our company’s works motorsport focus for the years ahead.”