Among some motorsport fans, Formula E has been dismissed as insignificant. But maybe that’s missing the point, for perhaps it’s a championship that’s not really meant for traditionalists, instead belonging to future generations.
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds, who’s now 18 months into the role, is relaxed and engaging as Autosport sits down for an interview. His office is not covered in the typical motorsport memorabilia, and in the corner of the room is a putter and some stray golf balls.
We kick off by asking for his honest assessment of the championship after its first decade.
This writer was at the inaugural London E-Prix, the final two races of the 2014-15 season held in Battersea Park. The racing was dreadful; the TV coverage was even worse (helicopter shots were obscured by all the trees).
“I talk about there being three different time horizons for Formula E,” says Dodds. “The first being the plucky start-up phase. Then you’ve got this disruptive teenager phase, and then hopefully we’ll go on and be a kind of maturing adult.
“If you go back and look at the start-up phase, very much selling a dream. The year it was formed, there was only 300,000 electric vehicles sold worldwide. This year, they’ll probably be 17-18million. So it was very much emerging technology. It was trying to get organisations on board that believed in electrification, believed in the energy transition, believed in sustainability.
“We’ve now moved into these curious teenage years where the business continues to grow really rapidly. We’re on a growth spurt. So almost 400million fans, almost half a billion TV reach, and the technology is not comparable to where it was when it started.
“When you watched that race in Battersea the top speed would have been 140mph, 0-60mph would have been three seconds, and the battery lasted half the race. Now it’s 200mph, the car that hits the track this year will be 1.8s [for 0-60mph], so 30% faster than
an F1 car accelerating, and the battery lasts for the full race.
“When you think about that leap in only 10 years, it’s pretty incredible. So I would say my report card would be: great start to the term, difficult middle period punctuated by COVID. But momentum is really strong, so things look good for us.”
"If I talk to my children – one of them is a big motorsport fan – the reality is, they’ll probably never drive a car that’s not electric" Jeff Dodds
Dodds makes a valid point about the technological changes on track, and there have been considerable improvements. But Autosport is struck by two things. Firstly, the metrics he is using to measure the sport’s popularity, for a TV reach of “half a billion” is sizeable and requires substantiating, plus a belief that the popularity of the series is linked with the global purchase of electric vehicles. We first ask about the latter and whether Dodds believes there is a correlation between the two.
“Yeah, of course,” he says decisively. “Our growth has largely mirrored the growth of electric vehicle take-up. Our relevance grows with electric vehicle take-up. So if you were looking to change cars and you’re looking to validate your decision to move to an electric vehicle, you’d look for reasons and when you start looking up electric vehicles and understanding electrification, you obviously find our race series, if you didn’t know about it before.
“If I talk to my children – one of them is a big motorsport fan – the reality is, they’ll probably never drive a car that’s not electric. Whereas I’m of a generation that’s grown up with V8s, V12s, V10s, the sound, and the smell of petrol; but maybe with the next generation, something else appeals. If I go to see F1 or IndyCar, I like the sound, but maybe I’m not the generation that Formula E is being built for. It’s motorsport for the next generation.”
In terms of measuring growth, Dodds says he has “about 25 different metrics” to assess the business, with the top-level ones designed for “noise metrics; are we getting noisy? Are more people following us? Are more people watching us?”
One element is the importance of TV. Formula E in the past has chased free-to-air UK TV deals, but has struggled to maintain a healthy relationship. The races have often been bumped onto ‘red button’ coverage or simply pulled for clashes with scheduling.
Now, though, Dodds is confident that an as-yet-to-be-announced partnership will lead to greater exposure. “We added a lot of broadcast deals last year,” he says. “So CCTV, the big state broadcaster in China, Fuji TV in Japan, Sony TV in India; as you go around the world, we’ve done some really big media deals.
“The deal we did in the UK last year was TNT Sport, and there’s a lot of positives to that. The broadcast quality was excellent but, being behind a paywall, you reduce the exposure to the number of people that are going to watch it. So without saying too much, I think we found a really, really good win/win as we move into season 11 that will allow us to maintain the broadcast quality that you get from being behind a paywall. But will also give us a route to expose that product to a lot more people in the UK.”
For its 11th season, the championship is hoping to introduce pitstop charging to spice up the action, which the cynics will no doubt label as a gimmick, but Formula E is not going away. The naysayers may scoff, but if Dodds and his metrics are right, then the next decade could be more significant to FE than its first.
