Volkswagen urges World Rally Championship not to dither over EV
https://www.autosport.com/wrc/news/1...lectric-future
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Volkswagen urges World Rally Championship not to dither over EV
https://www.autosport.com/wrc/news/1...lectric-future
Think what he aimed at was Latvala's (this year) and Meeke's (last year) comments on giving up season already before Argentina.
Don't crucify me for bringing up F1. However, there are a lot of people in the F1 paddock who rightly say that road value seizes to be a value when it comes to drawing the regulations. In other words, the whole hybrid story is too detatched from road cars for it even to be a thing. I.e. they might as well go back to n.a. V8s... because people watch it for the show and thrill of it and nothing else.
I like rallying because there is a more of a real world aspect to it. They are (highly modified) cars that you can actually buy racing on streets that people actually use. That said, they might as well stick to internal combustion because like in F1, we tune into WRC for the show and maybe some nostalgia. Hence I don't see the point of the WRC turning electric.
If they want to implement a 'WRC E' series in tandem to WRC like FormulaE to F1 to showcase the advancements of electric cars - fair enough, but I won't watch it either.
I agree with Smeets to be honest. I don't think full electric is even possible with the current format of rallies but some kind of future proofing of the sport needs to be taken into account. I assume there are manufacturer working groups where the regulations can be discussed before they are written. Hopefully other proposed manufacturers who are interested in joining the WRC could be part of those discussions. But like he says who are they?
I've seen a few people slating Smeets/VW for commenting. Let's be clear, he's not just got out of bed and thought I'll start slagging off the WRC today. He's been asked about it by David Evans at Goodwood whilst there with the ID electric Pikes Peak car and he's given an answer.
Smeets should shut the F... up.
He is a VW puppet that tries to play the new narrative of the VW after the Diesel gate... they suddenly turned into tree huggers overnight fater they got exposed.
Americans were hypocrites when they still had their own vehicles throwing out pollution.
https://youtu.be/uG8EXFvyXXw (US truck)
WRC could use bio-ethanol blend E85 if looking for a slight green wash.
Lithium battery pack fires can flare up days afterwards. Would probably require a specialist rescue crew to follow the WRC events in countries with few battery cars so proper electric vehicle rescue procedures could happen.
There are redox flow cell batteries and more advanced ultra capacitors etc coming along, so I would not rule out ev wrc cars at some stage.
Smeets and VW Motorsport in general are just a bit angry they have spent an huge amount of money on that EV Pikes Peak car and now they dont have a motorsport series where they can use the technology for further promotion, they already have a bunch of subsidiaries on FE and beyond that there isn't really another option, they know F1 won't budge so they keep trying to pull strings on other series.
That said, I would very much like to have some sort of Hybrid powertrain for the next set of regulations, I think cars could have improved performance without loosing too much appeal for spectators, after all the engines could be a copy paste of the current. And then I would like to hear what kind of excuse VW would have not to re-enter the series.