Link: https://www.fiaformulae.com/en/formula-e-gen4-unleashed

It’s essentially a ground-up reinvention that pushes electric motorsport into entirely new territory. If you haven't seen the details yet, here is a thorough breakdown of why this car is so exciting and how it fundamentally shifts the landscape.

🚀 The Acceleration is Unreal (Faster than F1)
The Gen 4 delivers 600kW (roughly 815bhp) of peak power. Combined with a footprint of just 954 kg (without the driver), the power-to-weight ratio is insane. The result? It rockets from 0-100 km/h (62 mph) in approximately 1.8 seconds. To put that in perspective, that is 30% faster off the line than a current Formula 1 car.

🏎️ Permanent All-Wheel Drive
Unlike previous generations (and unlike F1, which is Rear-Wheel Drive), the Gen 4 features permanent active All-Wheel Drive. It’s the first dedicated single-seater racer to do this. The software required to actively distribute that massive electric torque across all four wheels instantly to eliminate wheel spin is cutting-edge and highly relevant to the torque-vectoring tech we are seeing in high-end consumer EVs.

⚡ Masterclass in Efficiency and Regen
This is where the engineering really shines. The powertrain operates at over 97% efficiency. Even wilder, it features a 700kW regenerative braking capacity—meaning it can absorb more power under braking than its standard race output (450kW). It recovers nearly 50% of its total race energy just from braking, allowing the cars to run highly aggressive sprint races on a relatively small 55kWh battery.

🏁 Bridging the Gap to Top-Tier Racing
There’s always a debate about how FE compares to F1. While F1 still dominates overall lap times purely due to massive aerodynamic downforce in high-speed corners and a higher top speed (220+ mph vs the Gen 4's 208 mph), the Gen 4 is rapidly closing the gap. FE cars completely demolish F1 cars in low-speed traction and burst acceleration out of tight street circuit corners. With the Gen 4 introducing proper dry racing slicks and dual aerodynamic packages (high downforce for qualifying, low drag for racing), performance levels are expected to rival Formula 2 and IndyCar.

♻️ Zero-Waste High Performance
Despite the massive performance boost, it remains the most sustainable race car in the world. The chassis is 100% recyclable, the bodywork uses at least 20% recycled carbon fiber, and the new tires are engineered from sustainable materials without sacrificing mechanical grip.

Permanent All-Wheel Drive

Okay but...why?

Why not? And you probably need the additional traction for that kind of acceleration out of corners

The same reason every other race car is RWD; It's the optimum configuration. The front tires have a finite amount of traction that needs to be reserved for cornering. Almost all of the weight shifts to the rear tires during acceleration. Putting an extra motor adds a bunch more weight. How many reasons do you want?

But given that it's better out of the corners than an F1 car, it must have some benefit.

...is it?

Traction in dry and wet, no wheelspin from the 800hp, more power to the road given the much higher torque.

Why the fuck are they using horsepower to define an EV. They should only be mentioning torque. Hp is a fake number based on torque and RPM from ICE.

The front drive wheels grab most of the energy to regen during braking, that's why Gen4 is far more efficient.

Gen 5 will see YASA-style hub motors and no brakes at all as axial motors can harvest so much energy, brakes are redundant and just add weight.

♻️ Zero-Waste High Performance Despite the massive performance boost, it remains the most sustainable race car in the world. The chassis is 100% recyclable, the bodywork uses at least 20% recycled carbon fiber, and the new tires are engineered from sustainable materials without sacrificing mechanical grip.

Then we fly them all over the world in planes using hundreds of tonnes of fuel.

That's a petrolhead take.

The front drive wheels in FE harvest energy.

The front tires have a finite amount of traction that needs to be reserved for cornering.

You really don't understand how race cars work.

Nah.nahnah...all those PhD engineers at Dallara are stupid.

It’s a fair point if we were talking about traditional ICE dynamics, but EV racing fundamentally changes the math. As for the engineers, the engineers at F1 are brilliant, but they are building RWD cars because of the FIA rulebook, not pure physics.

Here is why AWD is the optimum configuration for the Gen 4 car:

1. F1 is RWD by regulation, not perfection
   F1 cars are RWD because Article 9.1 of the F1 Technical Regulations explicitly states: "Cars must be driven by the rear wheels only." AWD was actually banned in F1 decades ago because it provided too much traction, and the FIA wanted to limit cornering speeds and reduce costs. If F1 engineers were allowed to use active AWD with electric torque vectoring, they absolutely would.

2. The "extra motor" adds 0 kg of weight
   You mentioned an extra motor adding a bunch of weight. The front powertrain (MGU) is already mandatory in Formula E purely for regenerative braking. It has to be there to achieve the 700kW regen capacity that keeps the battery small and light. Because the physical motor is already sitting on the front axle, turning it on for acceleration adds exactly zero kilograms of weight. It’s free traction.

3. EV Center of Gravity changes weight transfer
   While weight does shift to the rear under acceleration, an EV's center of gravity is drastically lower than an ICE car's because the heavy battery pack is laid flat in the floor. A lower center of gravity significantly reduces longitudinal weight transfer. The front tires still maintain a substantial load under acceleration, meaning there is plenty of physical grip left to exploit.

4. The Traction Circle and Torque Vectoring
   You are 100% correct that front tires have finite grip that must be shared between cornering (lateral) and acceleration (longitudinal). However, the Gen 4 car uses active torque vectoring. A computer calculates exactly how much lateral grip is being used and only sends torque to the front wheels as the driver unwinds the steering wheel and lateral forces decrease. It perfectly fills the "friction circle" in milliseconds without ever overwhelming the front tires.

Traditional ICE RWD is optimal for the rules of F1, but when you have a front motor already installed for regen and software that can perfectly distribute torque in real-time, AWD is vastly superior for off-the-line and corner-exit acceleration.

It would be cool if they had to use electric transport to get from race to race. I suspect we'd see a bunch of innovation expeditiously.

The front drive wheels in FE harvest energy.

That's a fair point. But not something anyone would care about in any other race class.

You really don't understand how race cars work.

Okay, I've only been studying them for 30 years. Would you care to take a swing at an answer or did you just come here to toss personal insults?

Hp is a fake number based on torque and RPM from ICE.

You can convert it to watts if you prefer, but it's very much a real unit, denoting how much work it does per unit time. Torque alone is insufficient (just as force measured in newtons alone would be insufficient) for showing whether a particular machine is more powerful than another.

The front tires have a finite amount of traction that needs to be reserved for cornering.

To borrow an analogy from computer RAM, unused traction is wasted traction. Yes, when cornering, all of the available traction should be devoted to steering. But for the straights, why not use the available traction for acceleration?

Because of the other points I mentioned.

I was under the impression that giving the motors the ability to put torque back into the wheel doesn't add any significant weight over the existing regenerative braking systems.

Plus there's still plenty of moments where there is actually traction to spare, where being able to push each tire closer to its traction limits for a larger percentage of the time during a race would surely improve performance.

I can believe it might not be worth the tradeoff, but don't believe that adding the capability would always categorically be a mistake.