Jaguar TCS won its first Formula E team title on Sunday at London’s unique indoor/outdoor ExCel Center circuit, marking the culmination of more than eight years of work since the automaker first bet on electric racing.
It’s a bittersweet victory for the Coventry-based luxury carmaker. Two New Zealand drivers, Nick Cassidy and Mitch Evans, missed out on the chance to lift the coveted Drivers’ Championship, leaving the team’s VIP area in disarray.
The whole team regained their mood and celebrated the victory. For bigwigs at Jaguar headquarters, the win is a reminder of the promise of the future for the soon-to-be all-electric brand.
Tomorrow’s electric cars
The appeal of having a racing team to a manufacturer is obvious. It can reinvigorate an old brand, especially one characterized by speed and innovation. Game day is also a great opportunity to entertain clients.
They also get to show off their mass-market cars, the big money behind the racing team’s allure.
speak at the meeting Financial Times The future of cars Meeting Last year, Aston Martin boss Lawrence Stroll boasted that his company had sold 300 to 400 Vantage F1 Edition cars because a replica was used as F1’s safety car.
This equates to approximately $80 million in revenue.
Perhaps most importantly, though, race cars were testbeds for the cars that would one day burn up Europe’s autobahns.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has committed to producing only electric vehicles from next year, so it naturally chose Formula E as its test platform.
When Jaguar Land Rover hired James Barclay as the first head of its electric racing team in 2015, he said he and his team were essentially starting with a blank slate.
Jaguar Racing (Getty Images)
“We hope to use it as a real-world test bed for electric vehicle technology,” Barclays said. wealth during Friday’s roundtable.
“Doing so may be slightly ahead of the road technology curve for production vehicles.”
After eight years in the paddock, the automaker is already starting to reap the rewards of these innovations in a rapidly evolving industry.
Last year, at the Monaco Electric Grand Prix, the team trialled a “re-refined” transmission oil developed by Castrol.
Silicon carbide semiconductor technology was originally developed in Jaguar’s 2017 Formula E race car and will be rolled out to its commercial models in 2021.
“It forces you to do things that normal development wouldn’t do because you have to innovate to beat the competition,” Barclays told us wealth.
Future innovations
Barclays estimates the time it will take for its discoveries on the Formula E track to be translated into commercial vehicles is about four years, as does its carbide technology.
Part of this comes from a partnership with team sponsor Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), whose parent company also owns Jaguar Land Rover.
Like Jaguar Land Rover, TCS entered F1 through a partnership with Ferrari, but left it behind to focus on endurance racing by sponsoring marathon events such as London and New York.
It has since partnered with Jaguar in Formula E.
The manufacturer used a “digital twin” developed by TCS to help Jaguar Land Rover conduct simulations using digital copies of the group’s cars and drivers.
“Care technology is very important,” said Abhinav Kumar, global chief marketing officer of TCS.
Barclays said all innovations from Jaguar and TCS will lead to cars that charge faster, more efficiently and faster.
Last Sunday was the last time the Jaguar TCS team took the Jaguar I Type 6 Formula E car into the garage to make way for the automaker’s next, more advanced iteration.
But it won’t be long before the powertrains, re-refined oils and innovative software used on the track will leave their mark on Jaguar cars on the world’s roads.
