Electric RallyCar Development

**mknight** · 2nd September 2021, 17:38

Who pays for FIA-approved racing fuel and refueling zones?

The biggest difference is that a charging truck has high investment cost and low running cost. While racing-fuel infrastructure is the opposite.

Anyway on second thought a "connecting box/case" (maybe including cooling) that can be used on public chargers might be the best solution even in like 2-3 years
Obviously in a rally the organizers will then close off some chargers to the public and designate them as charging zones.

**Mirek** · 2nd September 2021, 17:41

Originally Posted by mknight

Who pays for FIA-approved racing fuel and refueling zones?

Sorry, but it's impolite to answer a question by a question.

Who will pay those millions of Euros for those charger trucks?

**mknight** · 2nd September 2021, 18:39

The same people that pay for the FIA-approved racing fuel and refueling zones....

which in the end is the participants.(drivers/teams).

Both directly (fuel cost) and indirectly (entry fees to rallies/championship).

Obviously with high investment cost and low running cost+reuse it makes little sense for every rally (or competition) to buy their own. So FIA/national organization has a competion for charging supplier who gets fixed sum+payment per driver on each rally. (Again either entry fee or "pay per kWh").

"But it will be so expensive".
Quick calculation is: 3 MWh Tesla megapack is about 1 mil.
Assuming 50 kWh batteries in each car that's 60 cars. So on normal rallies with 100 cars you need 2 + say 2 recharging themselves ( that ignores any chance of connecting to the grid at the rally car recharging location). So 4 mil.

Now the big question is how you utilize those? For one championship that has a rally once per month? That wouldn't make sense. Let's say you share it with 3 championships that have 6 rallies each.
4 mil/(18*100)=2,2k euros per car and rally.

That's assuming the trucks last one year. If we assume some replacement needs and say they last 3 years on average you get 700 euro per car and rally. That doesn't sound too bad.
Obviously these are very approximate figures but I'd assume they are not orders of magnitude wrong.

Anyway it still makes more sense to try to use existing infrastructure (charging stations) as much as possible. Cause as I mentioned and you ignored. The big difference between petrol and electric cars is that electricity (converted) is same for everyone and those converters (AC/DC, voltage etc) are not oil-rafinery sized.

**Franky** · 3rd September 2021, 15:02

In your calculations you are forgetting the most important aspect of our economy. Capitalism. A Tesla megapack may cost roughly one million, but it's just a single cog. There are so many others you need to consider as well. From staff and facilities to profit and future investments. Charging up the storage will be the cheapest part - LINK TO EU PRICE STATISTICS

**Steve Boyd** · 4th September 2021, 00:58

Originally Posted by mknight

Now the big question is how you utilize those? For one championship that has a rally once per month? That wouldn't make sense. Let's say you share it with 3 championships that have 6 rallies each.
4 mil/(18*100)=2,2k euros per car and rally.

That's assuming the trucks last one year. If we assume some replacement needs and say they last 3 years on average you get 700 euro per car and rally. That doesn't sound too bad.

Until you look at the fact that a typical 45 mile (70 km) rally in the UK has an entry fee of about €700 so you are proposing a doubling of entry fees to cover the cost of providing charging facilities when most competitors don't need them.

**Mirek** · 5th September 2021, 11:23

Originally Posted by Steve Boyd

Until you look at the fact that a typical 45 mile (70 km) rally in the UK has an entry fee of about €700 so you are proposing a doubling of entry fees to cover the cost of providing charging facilities when most competitors don't need them.

Moreover it's about one-time investment which needs to be done pre-season which is a different thing than entry fee or fuel expenses every now and then.