F1 cars are more efficient than electric cars

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Thanks to efficiency gains made under the current set of engine regulations, Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes W07 Hybrid is more energy efficient than the average electric road car.

News last week that Tesla has received more than 276,000 pre-orders for its new family-sized electric car, underlines the shift in thinking in the automotive industry towards electric vehicles. Yet in a county like the U.S.A. where at least 66 percent of electricity comes from coal- and oil-fired energy stations, with just 13 percent coming from renewables, an F1 car is arguably greener.

The thermal efficiency of Mercedes' class-leading hybrid F1 engine has now exceeded 45 percent, with 50 percent thermal efficiency a very real target in the next couple of seasons. By contrast, coal and oil power stations achieve thermal efficiency of around 33 percent, meaning the power used to drive an electric car is likely to be coming from a less efficient source than an F1 engine.

Mercedes technical director Paddy Lowe believes F1 technology could offer a more efficient future for the automotive industry, but says the message is not being spread widely enough.

"Electric cars are seen as green and the solution to all carbon emissions, but they are absolutely not," Lowe told ESPN. "It all depends where you get the electricity from and in a typical country with a regular profile of electricity generation, a Formula One car is massively more efficient than any electric car being charged from a power plant which is burning hydrocarbons. It is incredible that we've done that, but nobody is really talking about it that much."

The beauty of F1's drive for efficiency is that it is the only way to gain more performance. By limiting the amount of fuel and its flow rate to the engine, the only way to have a more powerful engine is by making better use of the fuel available.

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