At the launch of its all-electric concept car, NASCAR was at pains to point that it likely wouldn’t ever be its Cup Series platform or race in the Daytona 500. So why build it then?
For a series that prides itself in being faithful to its roots, and being the oldest of schools when it comes to racing, the multi-billion dollar sanctioning body has been flexing its muscles recently when it comes to innovation – something that hasn’t exactly been prevalent for a series that only embraced fuel injection a dozen years ago.
A race inside the Los Angeles Coliseum? Check. A new generation of car that means teams don’t have to fabricate chassis themselves? Check. A street race in Chicago? Check. Race a stock car at the Le Mans 24 Hours? Check. So, what comes next?
Well, NASCAR partnered in this battery electric vehicle (BEV) project with Formula E title sponsor ABB, a global leader in electrification and automation, having been guided down this route some years ago at the behest of its trio of OEM partners – Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota.
ABB is a founding partner of the ‘NASCAR Impact’ initiative, the sanctioning body’s platform to advance sustainability across electrification. NASCAR insists it is “committed to the historic role of the combustion engine in racing” but is also set on decarbonizing its operations and reducing its carbon footprint to zero across its core operations by 2035.
The concept car was built by the NASCAR engineers responsible for the Next Gen car and the Garage 56 entry into the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the four-wheel-drive car has a generic Crossover Utility Vehicle (CUV) body made of sustainable flax-based composite.
It has been track-tested several times and boasts three STARD UHP 6-Phase motors (one front, two rear) supplying power directly to all four specially designed Goodyear tires. Courtesy of a 78-kWh liquid-cooled battery, the tunable powertrain can produce 1,000 kW at peak power. Regenerative braking converts kinetic energy into usable energy, which makes the car suited to road courses and short oval tracks.
“There’s a long, long road ahead for the combustion engine, be it powered from sustainable fuel or hydrogen for that matter,” said John Probst, NASCAR’s senior vice president and chief racing development officer. “Then there’s also the electrification side of that via hybrid.
“They’re on hybrids [in IMSA racing]. Today we have battery electric. I’m not sitting here saying we’re going to announce a series. That’s not what this is about. We built this car. We put it on track. That is our point, is to learn.
“We’ll have a story tell as we learn. And we’ll be in the driver’s seat wherever our future takes us. If you look out across the landscape, one thing that’s for certain is that change is accelerating all around us.”
Pat DiMarco, Ford Performance’s manager of NASCAR and analytics, emphasized that this was a toe-in-the-water exercise from the OEM side.
“The Daytona 500 will feature an internal combustion engine for well beyond my time,” DiMarco said.
“The [electric] experience may be good, may be bad, depending on how you look at it. It’s an unknown. We got to work through it. And that’s what this is.
“It’s educating and taking the feedback from the race fans as to, is this something that they want? Is this something that they like? And is this something that us, as the OEMs, want to pursue even further?”
According to former Cup champion-turned-FOX TV-commentator Kevin Harvick, the answer to that has already turned lukewarm, even before the launch of the car.
“I really think that the EV push came from the manufacturers, when NASCAR started this project,” Harvick said on his Happy Hour podcast this week. “And EV [sales] aren’t doing as well as what they were when this project started.
“It’s great to see that you have something, but I think NASCAR was so far down the line with the EV project, being pushed by the manufacturers, and at one point they were saying ‘we’ll each build three of them and put on some exhibition races’ but I think when the EV [push] went away, the manufacturers were like ‘hey, we’re not going to do that anymore’.
“And so NASCAR is stuck with this electric vehicle that they can do some demonstrations with, but that’s the only thing that excites me about it. But I can tell you this, there is no future for NASCAR electric vehicle racing.”
Harvick did allow that outside of America the project could likely have some legs, in perhaps becoming a platform that could be used in a touring-style series or to attract manufacturers outside of its orbit. But he also believes that NASCAR’s electrification story would much more likely to be hybrid-based, like the route its sister IMSA SportsCar Championship has taken with its premier GTP class.
“I appreciate the effort and I get it that there are other things happening on the other side of the world,” he added. “But anybody who thinks this would be a success… It won’t go far on the ovals, first off. On the road courses, it’s probably doable.
“I wouldn’t spend more money on it. Now will we maybe have a hybrid? We could charge the battery and run some caution laps, sure. We have to keep up with the technology for the manufacturers. But all-electric? No freaking way.”
It’s a sentiment that DiMarco agreed with to some extent: “Can we go race for 30 minutes, 45 minutes at a short track? Yeah. Is that a long enough race to go do something? Probably.
“Nitro Rallycross [which uses a battery-powered SUV-bodied platform, which it calls ‘Group E’] and some of the World Rallycross stuff [where EVs battle with ICE cars] run short races to give people time to watch. Do you want to go to the Daytona 500 [with EVs]? No. A mile-and-a-half track, you’re not gonna run for as long as you are [currently].
“But, you know, just seeing where the technology goes to dictate how we as OEMs in NASCAR roll it in.”
Conclusion
Think of this launch as NASCAR taking a prototype to the New York International Auto Show, or even the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s a concept car, just like Polestar or Hyundai or Volkswagen might debut at those glitzy exhibitions, to gauge reaction in terms of styling and audience appeal.
“You see it with the OEMs a lot, they put out prototype cars at car shows and judge the reaction from the fans and decide whether they want to go in this direction or do we want to go in that direction,” said Probst.
“It’s also a way for us to work with them and discover where do we want to be. The entire landscape of powertrains in general are in an incredible state of change.”
And that’s the thing, here. You’ll likely never see a Polestar, Hyundai or VW on a NASCAR grid with a pushrod V8 engine any time soon. But if there’s no suitable platform for them to cast their eye over, then there’s no long-term scope for them here either.
NASCAR has a faithful trio of OEMs operating across Cup, Xfinity and Trucks. But a tripod is only strong until you take a leg away, and waiting for Dodge to return probably isn’t the soundest long-term business model.
Going all-in on electric wouldn’t be wise though – who remembers the single-make Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy that supported Formula E? But fair play to FE, which is celebrating its 10th season and can boast DS, Jaguar, Mahindra, Maserati, Nissan and Porsche. The original all-electric series is still the best.
Think of this as a kind of high-tech fishing expedition with an eye to the future. OEMs are fickle, because they must follow what the marketplace demands. And the powertrain direction of travel for the masses is perhaps as uncertain as it’s been since the internal combustion engine beat horse-drawn carriages, steam power and the very first electric cars over a hundred years ago.
Don’t forget that NASCAR also owns IMSA, the sportscar sanctioning body that is overflowing with manufacturer support right now. And why? Because IMSA offers attractive class platforms that better fits the needs of global OEMs. And manufacturers love platforms, because they give stability for their multi-million-dollar investments that pay back in car sales.
Only time will tell if this car is utterly pointless or the most important thing that’s happened in NASCAR for years… And if market forces do demand a hybrid powertrain in NASCAR’s future, it could always point out that it’s a lesser of two electrification evils!
