No?
Mostly because Biden wasn’t really involved. It’s a dying gasp of a ridiculous sport trying to remain relevant.
This required a huge amount of redesign and engineering, why didn’t they design it to have an interchangeable battery? I know very little about the technical aspects of batteries and electric cars so maybe I’m underestimating the difficulty of designing interchangeable batteries for electric cars but it seems like electric race cars are a good place to develop the tech and would give them a better chance of competing with gas powered racing. In addition to that it seems like interchangeable batteries in consumer cars would solve a lot of the issues people have with electric cars.
There are some consumer cars with interchangeable batteries, but it’s more expensive.
I assume it’s a safety and reliability thing.
Those batteries supply enough power that accidental closing of the circuit is… not good. Additionally, vibrations and the forces involved in racing at that speed, are likely to loosen a removable battery.
Personally, it’d be interesting if they added distance as a scoring influence, and only getting x amount of charge. Maybe by using some form of time / laps, adjusting so it’s not a snooze fest.
Drive until you run out of power.
They need to have the connectors in the battery compartment and nothing but contacts on the battery surface itself.
Open the compartment, slot a battery in, close the compartment, and go.
Launching in Portland won’t move the needle. It’s cool, but Portland is the bluest part of a blue state.
Take those electric racers (E-racers? Erasers?) to Daytona or Indianapolis if you want to win hearts and change opinions.
