Mercedes is to pull out of Formula E at the end of season eight, in August 2022. The German manufacturer says it will reallocate resource away from its FE program and toward applying the lessons learned in competition to product development in series production.
Moving forward, the company will concentrate its works motorsport activities on Formula 1, which it says reinforces the sport’s status as the fastest laboratory for developing and proving sustainable and scalable future performance technologies.
While Mercedes will depart Formula E at the end of Season 8 as a works effort, the team’s management says it has begun exploring options for the team to continue competing in the series during the Gen 3 era, including a potential sale to new owners.
Markus Schäfer, member of the board of management of Daimler and Mercedes-Benz, responsible for Daimler Group Research, and Mercedes-Benz Cars COO, commented, “At Mercedes-Benz, we have committed ourselves to fighting climate change at full force in this decade. This demands the accelerated transformation of our company, products and services towards an emission-free and software-driven future, and to achieve this, we must give full focus to our core activities.
“In motorsport, Formula E has been a good driver for proving our expertise and establishing our Mercedes-EQ brand, but in future we will keep pushing technological progress – especially on the electric drive side – focusing on Formula 1.
“It is the arena where we constantly test our technology in the most intense competition the automotive world has to offer – and the three-pointed star hardly shines brighter anywhere else. F1 offers rich potential for technology transfer, as we can see in ongoing projects such as the Vision EQXX, and our team and the entire series will achieve net-zero status by the end of the decade.”
Article by LAWRENCE BUTCHER
