The Jeddah Grand Prix was the launch of the long-awaited recharging pit stops that these Gen 3 cars promised and looks to have delivered it.
When it was introduced, one of the main selling points of the Gen 3 Evo Formula E car was its ability to perform a DC fast charge during a pit stop. This idea would not only bring about a feature road going electric vehicles (EVs) already utilized but in an extreme environment where speed is everything. This weekend, we finally got to see this system in action during the Jeddah ePrix round of Season 11 of the Formula E series.
First, the Jeddah ePrix–in its namesake city in Saudi Arabia–is located on the same street circuit that Formula 1 utilizes during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix but shortened to just 1.865-mile in length and replaces the Diriyah street circuit. While the length is cut down drastically from its usual GP 3.836-mile length, the ePrix circuit adds four chicanes (two on the front straight, two on the back straight) and uses a hairpin to connect the GP circuit’s turn 3 to turn 22. That said, it wasn’t just being a new circuit that would bring excitement–and boy did it deliver on that with Race 1 on Friday night–this would be the debut of the Pit Boost recharging during a mandatory mid-race stop.
How Pit Boost Works
Pit Boost is a new way to add extra speed thanks to an increase of State of Charge (SoC) to cars while also creating some race strategy that Formula E was missing since it stopped doing the mid-race car swaps of the Gen 1 cars. It will also only be done at certain tracks that the FIA designates as a place to allow for Pit Boost stops with teams getting notifications 21 days before the ePrix. Attack Mode–where drivers go off the racing line at a certain section of the track for a limited power boost during a race–will still exist alongside this recharge stop, adding even more race strategy to this already unique all-electric series races.
Once the teams decide when their cars will stop within the window Formula E designates, they must also determine which car stops first, as only a single car may be recharged at a time in a pit stall. There will only be three team members to go over the wall during the stop. One to hold the “lollipop” or signboard to stop and release the car, two for the recharging and any other work the car needs while in the pit stall.
How Fast Is That Stop, Exactly?
First, don’t come in expecting a Formula 1 or even NASCAR pit stop times. Even without changing tires, this battery recharge session takes around 30 seconds to complete while a full pit stop will be timed to 34 seconds for all cars. Even so, we’re still talking about adding 3.85-kWh of battery SoC in that time frame, about 10 percent of the 47-kWh battery capacity of the Gen 3 Evo cars.
This equates to a 600 kW DC charge rate and, to put that in perspective, your average 800v capable DC Fast Charger system is only capable of 350 to 400 kW. At that rate, it takes around 30 minutes on average to charge from 10 to 80 percent SoC for something like a Hyundai Ioniq 5 with an 800-volt, 74-kWh battery pack. If it were capable of the same charge rate as a Formula E Gen 3 Evo car, that time would drop to as little as 6 minutes if it can hold that 600 kW from start to finish. Anyone who owns or studies EVs and battery packs knows that holding a high charge rate is a challenge due to thermal limits of the battery pack, among other issues with charging that hard.
XFC Is Here Now, Sort Of
The fastest charging road car, right now, is the Zeekr 7X SUV with its 75-kWh Golden lithium iron phosphate (LFP or LiFePO4) battery pack. It was capable of a 10.5-minute 10 to 80 percent DC fast charge using an 840-kW charging station in China. While impressive, it, too, dropped its charging rate as time went on with a peak of 460-kW before dropping and holding to just 400-kW between the 10 to 80 percent session. Its parent company, Geely Auto, also owns Polestar that tested a new battery pack in 2024 on a Polestar 5 electric sedan. This new pack used StoreDot silicon-dominate cells (a still experimental battery cell design) that went from 10 percent to 80 percent within 10 minutes.
The technology for extreme fast charging (XFC, as Polestar called it) is there, it’s just the need for adoption. Hopefully, the excitement of Formula E and news of these sub-15-minute DC fast charge times from other automakers can help drive public interest in XFCs here in the US.
Before You Go
Images: Polestar and Zeekr
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