StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - The Electrifying World of Formula E

Episode Date: August 3, 2018

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Race down the track with hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice as they explore the electrifying world of Formula E alongside DS Virgin Racing driver Sam Bird, adventure journalist Jim Clash, and Williams Advanced Engineering Technical Director Paul McNamara. Batteries Included.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/the-electrifying-world-of-formula-e/Photo Credit: Shivraj Gohil, courtesy of DS Virgin Racing. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly and I'm Chuck Nice and this is Playing With Science. Yes it is. Imagine you are driving down a street in New York, Paris or even Berlin, but you're doing 140 miles an hour. Oh yeah. And you're doing 140 miles an hour. Oh, yeah. And you're accelerating 0 to 60 in less than three seconds. And here's the kicker. You're not using a single drop of gas. Oh, my God.

That sounds like a dream. That's because you, my friends, have gone electric. Formula E has been tearing it up since 2014 with such illustrious names as Piquet and Prost behind the wheel, and Renault and Audi fielding teams, along with BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche, all joining in the next two years. Exciting. It is. And to give us the view from behind the wheel is DS Virgin Racing's Sam Bird.

Seriously, you're going to love this interview, and it's coming up very, very shortly. What he is racing today, you will be driving tomorrow. Isn't that the great thing about this sport is the fact that all of the technological advancements that are being made will

eventually be found in our cars very shortly. Yeah, they will. Which is why I think BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes are all joining it. Not to mention soon you'll have like Tesla, right? Jaguar. Jaguar. The I-Pace.

Did you notice I said it like you? Jaguar. Thank you. Right on. Go ahead. Go for Zebra. Zebra. Thank you.

I love that. There you go. That interview with Sam Bird is up shortly, but just to let you know, we will have the technical director from Williams, the people who supply the batteries for Formula E. Yes, and of course, if it's on wheels and it goes really, really fast, which Formula E cars do, then we have to speak to Jim Clash, who is our resident expert on things that go fast. That's right. That's all coming up shortly, but first now, let's get an interview with Sam Bird. Chuck and I caught up with him a little bit earlier on enjoy. Major difference for you between driving a Formula E car and other formulas because you've driven

several other types of racing cars so I'd be interested to hear what you feel the difference is between Formula E and others. Yeah just to give you guys a background I mean I've been involved in Formula 1. I was a reserve driver for Mercedes F1 for three or four years. I came second in GP2, which is now called Formula 2, so the series below. So I've driven some high-powered single-seaters,

and now for the last four seasons, I've been involved in Formula E. It is a completely different formula. It is only based on city circuits. So we go to tracks that are made up in inner cities and we race on them, which is highly exciting. The cars are fully electric. It's the first all-electric single-seater championship

in the world. So in those two respects, it is completely different. With an electric power output, there's different torque curves. Normally, torque curves in normally aspirated engines are not linear. This is obviously completely linear. When I ask for full throttle, I really do get full throttle. So there are many differences. Is there any sort of time lag on the normally aspirated engine to the powertrain that you're experiencing with the electric cars?

No, it's absolutely instantaneous. So it's pretty impressive in that respect. You have to remember when you drive a normally aspirated vehicle, it's only in the best of cases, it's probably 35-40% efficient. When you're talking about electric EVs and their efficiency, the efficiency can be up to 85-90% efficient. So when you get on the power, absolute linear torque curve, immediate response. Wow, that's pretty impressive. So now I understand that all the cars are essentially the same. What is it that your team has to do to give you an edge aside from having a totally capable driver such as yourself? Thank you. So yeah, you're right. The monocoque,

the chassis, and the battery, and the tires that we're. The, the monocoque, the chassis and the battery and the tires that we're given are all the same for every single team. What changes is after what happens after the battery at the rear of the car, at the back of the car, every manufacturer has the ability to design their own drive train, their own gearbox, have converters and use their own gearbox oh inverters and use their own materials in order to achieve the lightest the lowest center of gravity and the most efficient and the teams that are quick have achieved these things um so that that's where different manufacturers go i like the fact that it's only open in this area because if you start opening up the battery technology so early in a championship you'll get teams with huge budgets coming in and romping away

with the championship this way for marie can control the championship a little bit more and it means you know you go into any weekend and anybody can win it you know with the driver calibers we've got in this championship you go in there's 20 guys that can win a race so what is your favorite city to drive because you have you guys now have your circuit is set and it's always a cityscape behind you uh what's what's your favorite city to drive i mean whenever you win at these places it always fills you with a fond memory and you land up naming the ones that you've won um but you know in all honesty i'm not just saying this because i'm on the show now ready for new york but i would say that new york for me was the best

before the race last year i'd never been to new york before so uh it was a it was a very nice introduction to a great city. Cool, man. Cool. So when you were racing, you would always memorize a track, correct? Yes. How long does it take you to memorize a track? And how on earth do you compensate for the fact that it's now a cityscape and not a rolling countryside or a more rural landscape you'd say like with a classic f1 track yeah the going back to the first point i mean i've done seven eight hundred laps on the

simulator to prepare for this weekend beforehand so every single track we go to we go to paris with ds virgin racing and we do two three four days of simulation before i practice the circuit and it also gives the engineers an idea of how much energy we're going to use per per lap and we sort of get to see a bigger picture of what to use per lap energy figures energy numbers what to expect what the pace will be so we cover everything before we go there um it's as if we've done two or three race weekends there before we even get there so it's great it's great preparation you can gain all of that from the simulator in terms of so you are so much as energy output as energy recovery and where you are expanding it? Absolutely everything. We come up with all of our maps through the simulator

and they're within 1% of where they need to be for the race weekend. It gives us a really good starting point and obviously it needs some fine-tuning. A simulator can never be absolutely perfect, but it gives us a great platform. Now, with regards to my attacking a street circuit in comparison to a conventional circuit, it is different. You find yourself having to build up to being 100%. You can't overdrive the circuit and come back like you could at Silverstone, Spa, Hockenhayn, some other places where you can use the track limits, go over them, and then come back to find the limit.

If I go over the limit, guys, I'm in a wall. That's right. There's that element to it. So you have to build up to these things. So in that respect and with that in mind, what is the strategy difference for the type of track that you're driving on these hairpin turns are so tight and you're going into them especially at the beginning of the race with so many other drivers around you and they're so difficult to navigate i mean it looks terrifying to be honest but then but then coming out of them you know you have you know, your S curves and the long straightaways. So what kind of speeds are you getting up to on those stretches? And then how are you navigating those tight hairpin turns that you guys are making, especially when you're making them with a bunch of other drivers? Well, I mean, that's our job at the end of the day.

We've all been practicing this for the last decade of our careers. Negotiating a race circuit as fast as we possibly can is in our blood. It's in our DNA, and that's why we're paid to do what we do. A bit like how an NBA player can shoot three points from pretty much anywhere on the court, which astounds me you know that's negotiating a tight hairpin with 19 other world-class drivers around me i have to do that week in week out so for me that's that's my bread and butter um you know these cars that we're racing at the moment will be doing around about 140 miles an

hour down the front straight away in new y York before breaking into the tight hairpin. Next year, with the next generation of car, we'll see speeds of up to around 170 miles an hour on some of these street circuits, which then becomes really interesting. By the way, people are used to hearing F1, and they're used to hearing speeds of 2, whatever. are used to hearing f1 and they're used to hearing speeds of you know two whatever uh 117 miles an hour just so anyone knows on a city street is is actually faster than 220 miles an hour on a track it's it certainly feels like it when you're when you're that far away from a wall that's what i'm saying there's it's because because of the way the track is situated. At those speeds, there's really no room for error. I mean, I think your percentage of error is about 4% or 5%.

It's crazy. Oh, I would say less. I mean, the thing is this championship is so world class now with the manufacturers involved, the teams involved, but also the drivers involved are pretty spectacular. You break two meters too early and you're off the pace. You break two meters too late and you're in the wall. You have to be absolutely precise and perfect in order to be at the front of this championship. So I heard that they limit the speed on the car, that the cars actually go faster than that, but they limit the speed. Is that true? Well, the car that the cars actually go faster than that but they limit the speed is that true well the car is capable of more kilowatts per hour than what it outputs but in order to make it fair for everybody to make it an absolute level playing field because every battery the cells are slightly different slightly different age slightly different decay rate

so they've basically capped it okay everybody has the same amount a little bit like if you've got a battery in a in a computer imagine you've got the capability there to have 100 of its life but instead you're taking 95 and every single battery is the same wow sam before we have to let you go um the science aspect of it the technology that's evolving and pushing itself through you seem as if you're quite immersed in it are you that kind of driver that is all over the analytics and the data or are you the guy that just gets in let me go racing i'm a bit of both to be honest when it comes to the nitty-gritty of sorting out one mil of ride height here or one click on the dampers there

i trust my engineer completely to choose the right change at the right time he knows my driving style he understands track evolution weather uh stuff like this and what to expect the changes to be from qualifying to the race. But I do like to get quite analytical when it comes to what I can improve with. So I do spend a lot of time, as much as I can anyway, downtime looking at data, analyzing what I can do to improve as a driver and make myself faster at every single race. and that's brilliant and i i admire you totally for that uh where can formula e go and i don't mean a location i mean as a sport you know you're on a track you'll go around in circles gary um now where can it go where can it put itself in the sporting calendar as we've got to be like you talk f1 it's monaco yeah formula ego and make that sort of happen i mean look formula is still new uh and

it's it's like a baby that's growing up still but it's gaining followers which is great the technology is drawing in big manufacturers which is very important and i think it's important to recognize the fact that formulary is relevant technology to the here and now and to the future you look at formula one and i love formula one i was involved in it and it's great to have formula one still around but the technology that is in formula one i believe currently is only relevant to supercars and hypercars that you can buy for one million dollars plus and that's that's the the technology that's in formula one the technology that is going into formula e cars is going to filter down onto the production line and it's going to be in the everyday vehicle the new evs that are going to be coming out in the next few, and it's going to be in the everyday vehicle, the new EVs that are

going to be coming out in the next few years. And let's face it, that's far more relevant to every single person that's sitting at home right now, because in four or five years time, people will only be driving hybrids and electric vehicles. So I think that's what makes Formula E quite exciting, quite relevant, current, and good for the younger generation of fans so i think the sky's the limit to be honest with formulary i think it could grow and grow and progress and progress to the point where it is watched by millions of people worldwide i mean chuck that's the amazing what sam races today we will be driving tomorrow he will take maybe a little bit of a higher center of gravity well i hope i hope it's already it is already happening with with uh some of our our opponents at the moment the the software that

has gone from their race cars has actually filtered down into production cars that you can buy today that people can actually afford so it is working already well what you're racing today i was hoping to race tomorrow because i was going to show up and just ask, can I drive your car? Yeah, dude, sorry. I'm driving it. I want to win this thing. There you go. Well, look,

we've had a great time. Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks so much for talking to us. No worries, guys. Thanks very much for having me on the show. That's our interview with Sam Bird. Hope you enjoyed it as much as Chuck and I did. We are going to take a break. And when we come back, Williams Advanced Engineering.

Yes, they're the people that supply the batteries for Formula E. We'll be talking to them straight away. Right now, we have the great pleasure of being joined by Paul McNamara, who is the technical director for Williams Advanced Technology. And they are the company that builds the batteries for the amazing Formula E cars that we have been talking about. Paul, thank you so much for joining us. No problem. Good to speak with you, Chuck. It's our pleasure indeed let us talk about this super exciting um technological advancement that you

guys are working with in the battery for formula e okay so if you were to go and have a look at a formula e car and the formula e battery what you're looking at is a carbon fiber box right and that box plugs into the car and actually forms a structural part of the car so the front of the battery what you're looking at is a carbon fiber box right and that box plugs into the car and actually forms a structural part of the car so the front of the car goes off the front of it and the back of the car on the back and you take the loads through but the clever bits inside that box um and inside the box essentially we're joining up what we talk about as cells which i think people most people would probably associate with the battery, but we're putting all those cells in series so that we can create a high enough voltage so that we can get the power and the performance out of the car. And the task we have is to connect all

those up, to control them, to measure them, to keep them operating under the vibration and crash and temperature conditions that they might see during a normal race, and to make all that work together so that the big black box does what it needs to do on the track. Awesome. So we're kind of talking about roughly, what would it be, 200 kilowatts that you're generating with the battery? That's right. So the battery for the most recent season has been set up for a maximum of 200 kilowatts of power. So that's what it will give. And that would be the equivalent of what in terms of what would a person associate 200 kilowatts, which gets you like a speed of like 100 and what, 150 something miles per hour yeah so i mean i guess most people think about

horsepower so uh 200 kilowatts is you know 330 or so horsepower so that that's that's the sort of power that we can deliver from that battery that's amazing that i mean that's truly amazing 330 horsepower and you're talking about a feather white light car that's a tremendous amount of power that you're talking about that's plenty of power yeah so so i mean they are uh fast cars um the formery racing is all about the electric powertrain and making that efficient and technically efficient that's how the teams win right um but yeah to make the spectacle exciting then we need plenty of power and faster competitive racing so the competitive edge that a car uh team will get

will be in how they convert that power plant into actual like torque for the drivetrain is that really where the difference comes for the cars it's so so i guess we haven't said for the listeners that um the batteries are the same for all the teams so everybody's got the black box i've just spoken about 200 kilowatts and what they're going to do is they're going to take that power that battery will give and exactly as you say convert that to torque at the wheels um now by and large you'll be able to deliver the torque, the power. What's interesting is how long you can keep that going for. So the efficiency of the energy stored in the battery

tends to be the differentiator. So in a Formula E car, you're effectively fuel limited. If a driver wants to go quick he can go really quick trouble is he'll come to a stop before the end of the race so he's got to sort of manage how that is so the more efficiently engineers can make it the longer he can push at high power the more opportunities got to overtake and that's the differentiator oh wow that that's actually very exciting when you think about it because it's it's kind of like everybody's given the same amount of money. Now, here's the deal.

How are you going to spend that money to get to the end of the race and still be able to cross the finish line? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So a lot of internal combustion engine formulas do have a number of gallons of fuel limit on them. But generally, it doesn't tend to be a big limiting factor. internal combustion engine formulas do have a number of gallons of fuel limit on them but generally it doesn't tend to be a big limiting factor certainly here in formula it's what you're you're you're fighting with and racing with and so now i know that they change cars uh during the race because of course the battery can only do and go so far is there now, do you see a time when they're going to have no need to change a car

or maybe extend the race to twice as long with the car change? Okay, so with the Formula E series, the guys running and setting the regulations for it set out this vision of the first four years. and setting the regulations for it, set out this vision of the first four years. We've just finished the last race of the first four years in New York a couple of weekends ago. And that was the two cars per race vision with the sort of technology that got engineered in four or five years ago and then we've developed. Next season, which is the fifth season of formula e right we have a whole new car and a new battery for that across the series and those cars will run the entire length of the race on one battery so we no longer have the changing of cars in the middle and that's

a reflection on how the technology has moved on across the last five years both in terms of the cells themselves i was talking about earlier, but also in the way you extract energy from them and patch those together. Okay. So speaking of the cells, and this really interests me. So I'm holding in my hand right now my cell phone. Okay. And they used to call them a cell phone because there were cell towers. Now there's an actual cell inside of my cell phone. And if I use my cell phone for any period of time, it gets hot. So my question to you, Paul, is you're looking at this huge power plant.

How do you keep something that big that's putting out that much energy from generating or overheating? Because I'm sure it's generating heat. How do you manage that? Because it would seem like it would just get hot and melt. Yeah, you're right. I mean, certainly when you're chucking out 200 kilowatts of power to the wheels, you're also having to get rid of something in the order of 20 kilowatts of heat. 20 kilowatts of power to the wheels you're also having to get rid of something in the order of 20 kilowatts of heat 20 kilowatts of heat is a lot you know so that that's uh six or seven three kilowatt fires around your house that's keeping a whole house warm easy yeah through the through

through the winter um so if you look at the cars a bit like formula one cars um there's two great big radiator grills either side of the driver sucking air through. And actually, we devote one side of that to cooling the battery. So we've got a radiator in there and a cooling circuit around the battery. And the other side is cooling the electric motors and the inverters, which are a power conversion device in the car. conversion device in the car. So another part of the competitive edge for a team is how efficiently they can package that cooling arrangement. But within the battery, as the battery engineers, we've had to develop some quite interesting technologies to make sure we can cool that battery inside, get the coolant right up against the cells, make that as efficient as possible to make it lightweight.

Wow. Super cool. That is super cool. So when you talk about that, how do you monitor? Because I'm thinking about like the intricacy of what you just said. Is there some type of computer monitoring the battery itself as you're driving? Because this is a lot of things that you're juggling that you have to keep kind of track of during the race. Yeah, sure. So another important part of a battery within a Formula E car, and actually in a battery anywhere, is the so-called battery management system. And that, in essence, is a computer sat on the top of the battery doing a lot of monitoring. Now, in the case of the Formula E one,

every single cell we are measuring the temperature of it. Every single cell we are measuring the voltage across it. The algorithm in there is detecting anything going slightly out. It's making sure the health of the battery stays good and regulating, if it needs to to the power that could be extracted from the battery if anything's getting slightly too hot during the race so we have continual monitoring of the battery the driver himself is not interfering with the battery the battery is just a sort of supply on demand device but the driver does have a lot of intricacy about operating

the car under his control about how he chooses to use the power, how it goes, the balance of the brakes, and all that sort of information he's dealing with. So actually, from an energy conservation point of view, there's a lot that the driver has to do with what we call the powertrain, which is electric motor, inverter, and gearbox, but not so much with the battery itself. Wow. That's pretty cool. That is very cool. Not so much with the battery itself. Wow. That's pretty cool.

That is very cool. So we're getting down to the end of the segment here, but there's a couple things that I really want to know, and I'm sure our listeners want to know. And that is, you guys are making all of these advancements. You know, Formula One at one point, you know, was responsible for seeing a lot of technological advances in regular cars. Yeah. Where do you see Formula E in terms of battery development? How soon will we start seeing these advancements that you're making coming to the streets? Yeah, absolutely right so as you say formula one has put a lot of advancements you know into the road cars and i think formula e has been very much set up with exactly the same ideas in

mind that you set up a racing formula with some controlled rules it provides a framework for people like us to try things out see how well they work on a racetrack. And if they work well, then that's something that can come over into cars. So right now, we at Williams are trying to take those technologies and move them across. So just a few examples. So the first one is control algorithms. So the control algorithms that have gone on to the race cars are going on to road cars right now that we're renovating. racecars are going on to road cars right now that are renovating. We've worked with a couple of universities here in the UK on developing new ways of measuring state of health of the battery to try and extend its life, make it more reliable. That's important for racing,

but it's also important for racecar road cars. We've put that across. I mentioned before the crash structure and the structural structure of the battery so the battery's forming part of the car using carbon fiber to keep the light the weight down we're applying that into high performance electric cars at the moment that will have carbon fiber based uh batteries um to shield and protect everything um and there's a few so it tends to be around the details of how you make these things how you make them lightweight ideas we've tried out in the racetrack, the work that we're putting into road cars now

So here's a final thought this is not necessarily the case when people say this but fossil fuels come from dinosaurs who died millions of years ago doesn't really work that way, we know but I will ask you Paul McNamara of who died millions of years ago. It doesn't really work that way, we know.

But I will ask you, Paul McNamara of Williams, are gasoline cars already dinosaurs right now? I don't think so. I mean, again, we've got to be sensible about how new developments come in and flow through. We can only deliver electric cars at the moment at a certain rate and certain applications. So we're seeing those on the market. There's a lot of engineering to do yet to make the products at the right cost, at the right range, at the right rate of recharging. There's a lot of engineering to do about making sure everybody can easy recharge a car.

So the reality is gasoline is a convenient and available fuel source for us. We've got to make electricity as storable, as easy to use, as easy to get hold of as gasoline is. as storable, as easy to use, as easy to get hold of as gasoline is. And as engineers, once we've done that, then electric cars can start to think about completely replacing gasoline. But there isn't some distance to go on that yet. Well, I'm sure it's a distance that you will cover. And I'm sure that I'm absolutely sure that that will happen.

And thank you for speaking with us. And continued success with everything that williams is doing and long live formula e because it's an exciting sport and i have to tell you i'm hooked on it fantastic i'm really glad about so it's been great to talk to you chuck welcome back uh i'm Gary O'Reilly. I'm Chuck Nice. And this is still Playing With Science, and it's all about Formula E. So, like I said at the top of the show,

if it's on wheels, goes really, really fast, then we can only talk to one person. That's right. And that is our very good friend, Jim Clash. Yes. Forbes Magazine. What's up, Jim? And that jacket, it says what on it? It looks like a Formula E jacket, but it really says Virgin Galactic on it.

I have a space ticket to fly with Virgin Galactic. And it says, future astronaut. Chuck and I are in no way jealous. Yes, exactly. I am also a future, oh no, I'm a future space cadet. Damn. Damn. Oh, exactly. I am also a future ask. Oh, no, I'm a future space cadet. Damn. Oh, well. So Formula E, Sam Bird told us that they are going to take the brakes off and these things are going to kick on to another, what, 40 miles per hour. Probably get a little bit faster. Got BMW entering the party for the next season. BMW entering the party for the next season,

and they've got batteries that are twice as powerful, half the weight, a third the size, and produce twice the performance. That's unbelievable. Yeah. Well, you'll be going from, I think they're maxing out about 140 miles an hour. At the moment, but he said to us they're limited. Yeah. Yeah, well, I think you'll see more like 170.

It won't be F1 performance yet, but 170 is cooking. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, like 170 F1, that's a course. You know what I mean? Like you pretty much know what's going on. 140 on these, the way they have these courses designed and how tight they are, that's like doing about 200 and something miles an hour easily. I mean, I'm trying to figure out how these drivers deal with reaction times. I mean, you know what it is to travel at those speeds. Football field a second is 200 miles an hour.

Wow. Wow. That's true. That's insane. I thought you were going to do, wow wow yeah yeah let's put some doppler effect on that you're right that's it that is kind of what they send us your best formula e impersonate please do yeah that'd be great but the thing is for me that that sat me back, because when he said, when you throttle, and I love this, a normally aspirated car, you'll get about 35% of the power coming through. So when you throttle a Formula E car, you get 70% to 80% of the power straight away. Now, that has to be a real kick in the pants when you're taking off from stop it's pulling some g's it's it's going up there with the drag racers where you're

really just accelerating in a ridiculous pace where do they go from zero to 100 miles an hour in less than four seconds that's three point whatever not to 60 and under three yeah yeah that is very very fast and you know i don't know if if anybody has the opportunity, if you go online to the Formula E YouTube page. Yeah. And it says the new sound of racing. And just look at those videos. And it's so cool. Like, because they, you know, when you hear it like an unlocking, it's like, clop.

Yeah, it gets you right here. So does Formula One, and so does IndyCar, and so does NASCAR. They all have different sounds. Yeah. Now, that's the thing that I'm kind of interested to know, is what it sounds like. I've never seen a Formula E race live, but what does it sound like live when these cars are going by?

A bit in Star Wars, I think one of the very early ones where they attack the Dexar. It's a little bit like without the lasers. Yeah, and it's all combined. So you've got how many different cars with all these noises on different parts of the track, so you get this sort of vibrato symphony of sounds. I touched on that magic thing, NASCAR.

Are NASCAR looking over their shoulder at Formula E and saying, well, we've seen off Formula 1. That's really never taken hold here in the USA. No, it hasn't. It hasn't. Is Formula E possibly the next one up to challenge NASCAR and the EV? Well, I think, first of all, Formula One has had trouble in the U.S. because we don't have a U.S. driver in Formula One. Also, there's not a lot of passing in NASCAR and in IndyCar.

You see a lot of passing. Formula E is trendy right now. Formula E is electric. It's environmental. And obviously, it is the wave of the future. And like Formula 1 used to be, people now are able to test what's going to be in future cars, electric cars with Formula E. Used to do it in Formula 1, but now this stuff is so… It's so out there. It's not helping.

Unless you're building hypercars, you're not going to be testing anything in Formula 1. Right. You're not going to be testing anything in Formula One. And a lot more of it is, and with the way business is now, I can imagine stuff that's happening in a Formula E car isn't going to sit there for 10 years. It's likely to sit there for 10 minutes and straight into production. But the other thing about your question is NASCAR, IndyCar, looking over their shoulders.

I think they're already thinking about doing it themselves. So you'll have an electric NASCAR, you'll have an electric IndyCar, probably a hybrid first. These people are planning way out. I heard a rumor that Roger Penske is going to get into Formula E. Penske's the guy in IndyCar.

I think his teams have won 17 Indy 500s. I mean, if Penske's going to get involved, that's serious. How are hardcore NASCAR fans going to take to not having? I heard that because, you know, there's a reason why they call it the thunder of NASCAR. I mean, would you have to, for instance, have a recording of an engine playing out of the car? Because, like, you you know they do that with electric motorcycles like there are some very high speed electric motorcycles and you can pick what

kind of motor you want it to sound like because when you're on the road one of the things that your friend and a motorcycle screen truck so yeah 100 miles an hour with the with the theme from So, yeah. 200 miles an hour with the theme from Greensleeves or whatever. How's that sound at the Doppler effect going by at 100 and something miles an hour? Imagine being overtaken by something with that sound. And have your kids just screaming, ice cream! From the car. But to your point, NASCAR fans probably wouldn't put up with that.

I think they would know enough that if you had a fake engine sound, they wouldn't put up. But again, like anything else, people evolve slowly and things evolve slowly. And the e-thing with NASCAR isn't going to happen tomorrow. It's going to happen down the road maybe 10 years. I don't know. And so they're going to slowly get people interested in those sounds. But, yeah, I really think IndyCar and NASCAR are looking over their shoulders, but they're developing their own. Developing their own, yeah.

There are some inherent issues with electric in batteries, overheating. You know, they haven't had a battery failure in the Formula E now in what? It's been since 2015. Yeah. So they've gotten a lot better. Well, one issue, though, is if you're going to be running those high-speed ovals for long periods of time. I think the Formula E race only lasts an hour at this point. That would be a problem.

But again, both NASCAR and IndyCar do run road races. They run on city streets. At least the IndyCars do. They were in Detroit. So, you know, you could pull that off. Now, as I understand it, though, with the Formula E, there's no pit stop. You just, when you come in, you get out of the car

and you get into another car. So they don't work on the one car because the battery life isn't what it needs to be. Right. So that's a challenge. I'm guessing with the introduction of people like BMW, they will address that because they're already reducing electric cars in

their i-series. Yes. I could totally see them. That makes a lot of, well, basically is the tech, this, their laboratory. Yes, I could totally see them. That makes a lot of, well, basically, it's their laboratory. That will all change racing dramatically. But again, when you're looking into the future right now, it's hard to see it.

But I do think Formula E or electric car racing is the future. Yeah. thing too is now one of the drawbacks of cityscape driving is that or or racing is that um you limit the amount of people that can come see it right you know however there's nothing more exciting because you can change the course track any way you want well and it's very challenging uh i think sam said it if you screw up uh one of those street courses with a Formula E car, it's going to hurt. Even at 140 miles an hour, when they ramp it up to 170, I mean, it could be a fatal accident pretty quick. If they don't have the barriers put up like they do on the Indy tracks or even on the Formula 1 tracks, they don't have a lot of time to fix a street course. Imagine the guys who run Formula E are unaware of that.

They're aware of it. Yeah. So they have to be very precise. And as Sam said, if you brake a little too late or you accelerate a little too early out of a corner. I think they're introducing a whole raft of formulas in the sense that I believe there's a kind of saloon car, which I believe will start with the Tesla. Put me in, baby. That's what I want to get. Saloon car, is that the tandem car?

No, no, so two-seater or get an experience. Jim wants to do the electric experience, but there's probably not. They won't let me drive the car. I've driven a real Indy car. I've driven a real NASCAR, but E is too new. But if they do the sidecar, that would give journalists and fans a real feel for what it's like to go around the track. If they use the Tesla models, then boom.

Chance you're in. I'm doing it. Good. So what about the passing? What you say is that one of the reasons F1 is because American fans want to see the passing, which is funny. I've always been an F1 fan, but I remember being a kid, the only place you could watch it was Sunday mornings on ABC. And that's still the only place you can watch it, except it's on NBCSN.

Really? 7.30 in the morning. That's so funny. And it depends on the track, because not every track is the same in different countries. Is it the Hungarian Grand Prix, where unless you're pole position and stay out in front, it's a procession.

Yeah, it is. Well, yeah, it's all about the pit stop. That's what people don't realize. When they're watching the race, it's not about the race. It's about the pit stop. Yeah, and their pit stops are two or three seconds. I mean, it's ridiculous. Like in a NASCAR and Indy car, they're seven or eight seconds. So any tenth of a second, well, a tenth of a second in those cars at 200 miles an hour is like 10 yards. So, you know. Yeah, it really means something. It's interesting.

Everybody thinks it's got to be about going fast. Everything's about speed. So we make it as lightweight as possible. Sort of looking at the way things are with Formula E, it seems it's about how much energy can I recover? things are with Formula E, it seems it's about how much energy can I recover? How much from braking can I recover, put into storage and then use that again? And it becomes interesting to see the mindset of how, where and why they go about doing that. I mean, I don't know, in Formula One, they do have those systems, but is it as important? I would say in a different way it probably is as important in all the racing series, reaction times,

the mathematical formulas within the engines and the brakes and all that. They'll figure it out. But again, that whole business of the torque is amazing when these electric cars take off. There's such a kick in the pants. No other race car does it except for drags, drag racers. Right, yeah. And it's because of what you were saying earlier, Gary. It's the efficiency, you know, the fact that they're basically using most of the energy that's available all at once as they accelerate. And they're trying to find ways, as I understand it, of taking the excess heat and everything

else and converting that into recharging the battery while it's actually on track. So that's one of the biggest problems, though, isn't it, taking off the excess heat from these batteries produced? It is something that they have had concerns about. But bearing in mind, as I said, the kind of people that are getting involved in the sport, you can only imagine the solutions will come that much sooner as to those sort of problems. Yeah, I'm just interested to see, I mean, I love the fact that you're potentially,

as this sport grows, you could see a race, like just an American circuit, where you could have a Miami race, you could have a Detroit race, you can have a Miami race, you can have a Detroit race, you can have a Chicago race. You can put this sport anywhere, and I think that that's really something that they ought to capitalize on.

Well, that's because, as you say, they only race on city streets. The big problem, though, in America, just like with Formula One, though, would be get people interested in that kind of racing, Formula E racing, because it's very different from nascar and indycar so that's that's a challenge and we need an american racer right it's good in it we also need to fix our potholes and the manhole covers got to be careful it sucks them up in the air if you're going that fast here's one for you and i i hope i haven't imagined this because if i have then my imagination is far more creative than i thought robotic racing no it will never work i've thought about this fans no no no fans they want to see danger they want to see the potential of something happening to the driver if you crash with some guy behind the controls right fans aren't going

to go for it i don't think so good i think you're think you're right. It's like watching a robotic trapeze artist. There is no fun in that. Two robots on a trapeze. It's like one of them falls to the ground. Who gives a flying pig? All right? No pun intended. Yeah, exactly. It's like, no, you want to see the potential of the loss of human life. I hate to say it, but that's the appeal. The appeal is that dude in that car or that woman in that car might die. All right.

Now I'm interested. Yeah. All right. So now here's what I want to know. How can we up the chances of these guys dying? No, no. Come on. Chuck, No, no, come on. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck.

Look, see, Jim has actually been in those cars. He's like, Chuck, Chuck, what are you doing? Please. There's enough of a chance. Way dark sort. No more of those. I know. I'm sorry.

But you know, in the old days, I interviewed Sir Jackie Stewart once, who raced from 68 to 73 in Formula One. He said that there was a two out of three chance of dying if you raced in that series in that five-year period. Are you kidding me? So he said they would look around the room at the 25 or so drivers beginning of the season and they knew a couple of them wouldn't be there

at the end of the season. That's crazy. So they made the sport so much safer. Good. But there still is that danger. Well, and honestly, here's the thing. Nobody likes to hear about a death, but here's what you do like to see,

and I'm sorry to say this. I can't apologize for it. You do like to see a crash, okay? Because here's the thing. When you see the crash and the car kind of like explodes in all these pieces and it looks like it's disintegrating, right?

And then you're like, oh my God, this is terrible. And then all of a sudden, the driver jumps out and gives you the thumbs up and you're like, that was awesome! You know?

That happened at Indy, an Indy 500 back in 2017. Scott Dixon had this horrific accident where he was airborne flipping around, hit the wall sideways. The car was disintegrated. And after his stop spinning, and it took a good seven seconds for this accident to play out, he put his thumb up and he got out of the car. And people loved it. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm too excited about this.

But the danger is still there, make no mistake. So I don't think, Gary, that the robotics would work. But it's an interesting concept. It's something that people are going to- Wait, I figured it out. Robots that feel pain. All right, Chuck. That's an improvement, but I'm not sure how much. I just think we have a generation coming through

that will look at Formula One as a little bit dinosaur and Formula E as the new bright, shiny thing that reflects more of us. Greener credentials, not harmful, da-da-da-da-da. Maybe maybe maybe they'll go towards it and robots remote control drones very much part of people's lives maybe they will see formula e and the way it expands in that way well they probably will because we again we can't see the future but the one thing i wonder about is these batteries. That's an environmental hazard, and eventually these batteries are going to die out. So I don't know if people are taking that

into consideration or not. Well, it's actually, the battery itself is not really an environmental hazard. It's the disposal of the battery that's an environmental hazard. So what we have to do is work on response. But that's just a problem that needs to be addressed worldwide, irrespective of any industry, is that we have to find a way to properly dispose of batteries or to recycle batteries. So I think that part of what they'll do as they develop this technology

is also develop that as well. They're going to have to. They're going to have to because it's going to be really expensive if they can't reuse parts of the batteries or the batteries themselves. I mean, we hate landfill sites. You can can't reuse parts of the batteries or the batteries themselves. I mean, we hate landfills. So I actually can imagine a big tower of car batteries and, you know, it's just not

going to happen. They've got to find that solution. Or they could sell pieces of them to the fans. Say this was taken off the Formula E car that Piquet drove or something, right? I don't mind that. Oh, there is a thought, but maybe we'll not dwell on it. And now we know why none of us are planning the future of Formula E. No, I'm joking.

So, Jim, while we have you here, you're a man that goes places and does things, and we won't say Danger is your middle name because I don't believe it is. Where are you off to next? And what are you going to be doing? And where are you coming from? Actually, the most more interesting is where I'm coming from. I was just out at Beale Air Force Base in California, and I got to fly in the old T-38 supersonic aircraft.

And it's a small plane. It's a tiny plane. You get in it, and you're thinking, oh, this is, I don't know about this. But we went up in formation, so we had another guy on our wing. And we were within about three feet of each other doing these maneuvers. That's crazy. At ridiculous speed. Scared me a little bit, but these pilots are amazing.

They defend our country. From what I understand, it's like one of the pilots' favorite plane to fly is a T-30. Well, Mike Massimino, who's a friend of StarTalk and an astronaut, he used to fly that. The shuttle astronauts did train that. Also, the U-2 pilots trained in that. And so while we were out there, we got- Ano flew a- What?

I think U-2 was named after the U-2 spy plane. The spy plane. But they still operate these. So we got to chase them as they landed because they're very particular. And you have a guy on a walkie-talkie telling them when their wheels are down. So we got to be in the chase car at 120 miles an hour right behind the U-2 as it landed. I also got to try on one of the space suits, pressurized and all that. So that was interesting.

I'm off to the Gobi Desert. Do you mean to go off to the Gobi Desert? Yeah. Find yourself? Yeah, that's part of it. What are you doing? I'll be driving Infinities, one of the new Infinity sport vehicles in the desert on the sand out in the Gobi. Really?

Yeah, I'm excited about that. You get to keep one or you just got to give it back? It's like when I do a story on Rolex, people always say, do you get to keep the watch? Nope. No. No. You get a little swag bag, but that's about it. That's nice, isn't it?

I like that. Swag bag. But anyway, so that's my next adventure. And of course, at some point, when Sir Richard gets the thing together. Gets the thing together, you'll be headed to space, my friend. Or as Neil deGrasse Tyson would say, low-orth orbit. Low-orth. No, actually, I won't even be orbiting.

I'm going to be doing a, what do you call it, a suborbital flight. Suborbital flight. So you kind of just go into the. Go into the space and you come back out, yeah. So I'm in space, five minutes. Right. It's costing me $200,000, so that's $40,000 a minute. Wow.

Let me tell you, I can't do that joke. Never mind. And on that note, and we've landed back on Earth. Yes, back on good old planet Earth. That's been our show. Thank you to Jim Clash. Yeah, man. A privilege and a pleasure as always.

Well, I look forward to coming back on the show to talk about something other than speed, but I love talking about speed. That's why you're on the show. And that's Formula E. Thank you to Sam Bird. Thank you to our Williams engineering people. And that's Playing With Science.

I'm Ben Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chad Nice. We will see you all soon.