It’s essentially a ground-up reinvention that pushes electric motorsport into entirely new territory. If you haven’t seen the details yet, here is a thorough breakdown of why this car is so exciting and how it fundamentally shifts the landscape.
🚀 The Acceleration is Unreal (Faster than F1) The Gen 4 delivers 600kW (roughly 815bhp) of peak power. Combined with a footprint of just 954 kg (without the driver), the power-to-weight ratio is insane. The result? It rockets from 0-100 km/h (62 mph) in approximately 1.8 seconds. To put that in perspective, that is 30% faster off the line than a current Formula 1 car.
🏎️ Permanent All-Wheel Drive Unlike previous generations (and unlike F1, which is Rear-Wheel Drive), the Gen 4 features permanent active All-Wheel Drive. It’s the first dedicated single-seater racer to do this. The software required to actively distribute that massive electric torque across all four wheels instantly to eliminate wheel spin is cutting-edge and highly relevant to the torque-vectoring tech we are seeing in high-end consumer EVs.
⚡ Masterclass in Efficiency and Regen This is where the engineering really shines. The powertrain operates at over 97% efficiency. Even wilder, it features a 700kW regenerative braking capacity—meaning it can absorb more power under braking than its standard race output (450kW). It recovers nearly 50% of its total race energy just from braking, allowing the cars to run highly aggressive sprint races on a relatively small 55kWh battery.
🏁 Bridging the Gap to Top-Tier Racing There’s always a debate about how FE compares to F1. While F1 still dominates overall lap times purely due to massive aerodynamic downforce in high-speed corners and a higher top speed (220+ mph vs the Gen 4’s 208 mph), the Gen 4 is rapidly closing the gap. FE cars completely demolish F1 cars in low-speed traction and burst acceleration out of tight street circuit corners. With the Gen 4 introducing proper dry racing slicks and dual aerodynamic packages (high downforce for qualifying, low drag for racing), performance levels are expected to rival Formula 2 and IndyCar.
♻️ Zero-Waste High Performance Despite the massive performance boost, it remains the most sustainable race car in the world. The chassis is 100% recyclable, the bodywork uses at least 20% recycled carbon fiber, and the new tires are engineered from sustainable materials without sacrificing mechanical grip.
Traction in dry and wet, no wheelspin from the 800hp, more power to the road given the much higher torque.
Why the fuck are they using horsepower to define an EV. They should only be mentioning torque. Hp is a fake number based on torque and RPM from ICE.
The front drive wheels grab most of the energy to regen during braking, that’s why Gen4 is far more efficient.
Gen 5 will see YASA-style hub motors and no brakes at all as axial motors can harvest so much energy, brakes are redundant and just add weight.
You can convert it to watts if you prefer, but it’s very much a real unit, denoting how much work it does per unit time. Torque alone is insufficient (just as force measured in newtons alone would be insufficient) for showing whether a particular machine is more powerful than another.