<story><title>Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/03/racing-goes-electric-at-the-track-with-formula-e-the-first-e-racing-series/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jeremyrwelch</author><text>Excellent interview with Formula E founder:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=jrTbdKe0XTo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=jrTbdKe0XTo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Best quote, when asked if he thought we could end our dependence on oil: 
&amp;quot;The stone age didn&amp;#x27;t end because we ran out of stones.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Really important to understand that this is just the first iteration of their plan. Goal is to get to single car for a full hour race within a few years. Agag says they now have many major cities approaching them about participating in the second year of Formula E, including San Francisco.&lt;p&gt;Also, the cars are louder than most people realize, at 80 decibels.</text></comment>
<story><title>Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/03/racing-goes-electric-at-the-track-with-formula-e-the-first-e-racing-series/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mapt</author><text>What I want to see is not heroic drivers like NASCAR, nor heroic billionaires investing in very similar tweaks, like Formula 1, but a diversity of creative conceptual engineering, competing in the same challenges, for lots of money.&lt;p&gt;Things like DARPA sponsors: The Grand Challenge in self-driving cars, and the Robotics Challenge.  The Ansari X-prize also applies.  BattleBots was a decent attempt at a sport along these lines.  Fields where true novelty still exists, and there are no consistently obvious paths forward.&lt;p&gt;My impression as a non-fan is that Formula 1 only achieves divergent innovation on rare occasions, and next season or two everyone is doing it or it&amp;#x27;s been banned by the race sponsors.</text></comment>