Enlarge / After a 10-year gap, Lola is back developing an electric racecar, or at least the powertrain for one, as it will enter Formula E next season. (credit: Lola)

In 2022, we brought news that Lola, a once-famous racing company, was planning its renaissance . Lola never really cracked Formula 1, but it did have success in IndyCar and sports car racing with cars it designed and built from the 1960s until it ceased trading in 2012. Now, under new ownership, the company has been rebuilding its engineering facilities and expertise. And together with Yamaha as its technical partner, it has chosen Formula E for its official return to professional motorsport.

Formula E's dart-shaped electric single-seaters are getting a bit of an update before they start season 11 next year. We expect new bodywork, better tires, and perhaps the ability to use the front electric motor to send power to the wheels instead of just acting as regenerative brakes on the front axle, but those components are all spec parts, meaning every team has to use the same ones without modifying them.

That goes for the battery, too, but there is freedom when it comes to the 470 hp (350 kW) electric motor that powers the rear wheels. And then there's the software, without which the car won't go anywhere.

Enlarge / I can think of maybe one other race track that has a volcano for a backdrop. (credit: Sam Bloxham/Formula E)

Jaguar Land Rover provided a flight from Washington, DC, to Portland and two nights in a hotel so we could attend the Formula E race. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

PORTLAND, Ore.—This year's Formula E season draws to a close this weekend, with the final two rounds taking place in London. The title fight is a three-way contest, with Avalanche Andretti's Jake Dennis leading Envision Racing's Nick Cassidy and Jaguar TCS Racing's Mitch Evans. Last month, the series held a race here in the US on the opposite coast of its traditional home in Brooklyn. Formula E did something outside its comfort zone, holding a race at permanent road course—Portland International Speedway. And as Ars found out, it was a good decision; this leafy race track with its volcano backdrop felt like a much better venue for Formula E than a humid parking lot next to the Hudson River.

It was also our first opportunity to see the series' new cars in action, and they're significantly lighter and more powerful than the Gen2 machines . As ever, the drivers have a lot of work to do to manage energy in the cars, thanks to restricted telemetry to their engineers in the pit lane and new tires that prioritize sustainability over outright grip.

This isn’t a city center street circuit

Portland was not the first Formula E race we've attended; we were on hand to see the series' rather chaotic Miami ePrix in 2015, and Ars logos even ran on a pair of cars at that year's London ePrix . Miami was not a repeat event for the sport, and the Long Beach ePrix in California was held only twice, in 2015 and 2016.

Enlarge / Jaguar's latest factory racing car is the I Type 6, its latest Formula E challenger. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Jaguar provided a flight from DC to London and back and a night in a hotel so we could see its new Formula E car and speak to its engineers. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

LONDON—On Wednesday, Jaguar Racing became the latest Formula E team to unveil its race car for the coming season. The sport has radical new technical rules for its third-generation race car, which is smaller, lighter, more powerful, and more efficient . This will be the British automaker's sixth season competing in the series, and its participation is for more than just marketing; Jaguar Land Rover's electrified road cars have benefited in tangible ways as a result, according to the team's technical manager Phil Charles.

"If you rewind back to 2017, that's the first time that [we used] our in-house inverter for the racing team," Charles told Ars. "We put a silicon carbide switching device, the Wolfspeed one actually... that gave us the ability to switch super fast. That was the push on our side—we want to switch faster and see if that can give us efficiency, which it did. So we've gotten over and over and over during these inverter development cycles, switching faster and faster and faster," he said.

At the time, few manufacturers looked at silicon carbide power electronics for road-going EVs. "Now everyone wants silicon carbide, and the reason they want it is the same reasons we do," Charles said. "So the tech that we pushed then has really caught up now—the race to road is really clear. If I kind of map our switching speed increase, we've done five evolutions with different topologies of the in-house inverter. Now the road cars are coming along and the benefit there is range, ultimately; it means smaller batteries."

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Porsche provided a flight from DC to Milan and back, plus two nights in a hotel so we could see its new Formula E car, as well as get briefed on VW Group's next EV platform, which you'll be able to read about next week. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

FRANCIACORTA, ITALY—Last night, Porsche unveiled its latest racing car at its Italian Porsche Experience Center, midway between Milan and Verona. The 99X is the marque's new Formula E car, as Porsche becomes the first of that series' competitors to show off its Gen3 machinery before the start of season nine. That gets underway in Mexico City in mid-January, and good news: Fanboost is definitely a thing of the past .

As the "Gen3" name suggests, it's the third race car design to compete in Formula E, and we've come a long way from the original Spark SRT_01E , which only had enough battery capacity to complete half a race. The new car isn't quite as light as we thought , but at 1,874 lbs (850 kg) it's still a chunk lighter than the Gen2 car, and 220 lbs (100 kg) of that was from the battery.

"Overall, the new car is smaller, is shorter, shorter track width, more agile, it's lighter, more powerful. Compared to Gen2 where we had recuperation of maximum 250 kW (335 hp), we now have 600 kW (805 hp), which is more than double," said Florian Modlinger, head of Porsche's Formula E program.

Enlarge / Lucas Di Grassi leads Jake Dennis in the 2022 London ePrix. (credit: Sam Bloxham/Formula E)

Formula E will close out its season this weekend with its first visit to Seoul, South Korea. It's not just the end of season eight and the last race for the Gen2 electric race cars but also marks the series' 100th race. The sport has come a long way since its first ePrix in Beijing in 2014, with more powerful cars, bigger batteries, and an ability to put on an exciting race at Monaco, something that Formula 1 hasn't been able to say for several decades.

Lucas di Grassi was the winner of that first ePrix and has raced in every ePrix since. He's still visiting victory lane, most recently in last Sunday's London ePrix, and this weekend may score his 1,000th career point in the series. With a background in Formula 1 and then Audi's mighty R18 e-tron Le Mans program , di Grassi knows his way around a race car. So he's usually a good person to talk to about the future direction of the sport.

Next season the sport gets a new car, one that's much more powerful—and lighter, too. But it's not quite as bold, technology-wise, as the concept di Grassi lobbied for . Although that car has yet to even race in anger, the various minds that contribute to Formula E's R&D road map are already thinking about Gen4 . Since we had the chance to speak with the driver ahead of this week's Seoul ePrix, I wanted to know his thoughts on where the sport should go next. As I hoped, he had plenty of them.

Enlarge / This is the last time that the Manhattan skyline will play backdrop to Formula E's Gen2 car, shown here. Next year the sport gets an all-new machine with a lot more power and a lot less mass.

Formula E makes its annual return to Red Hook this weekend for the New York City ePrix. Ars sadly won't be on hand for the races, which is a shame as it will be my last chance to see the Gen2 electric race car in action. I will have to make every effort to be there in 2023, however.

Next year will see significant changes for the all-electric racing series, including a much more powerful, much faster racing car and changes to some rules to make the races interesting. I can't guarantee it, but I think there's a good chance we won't see the return of Fan Boost, which will make some corners of the internet happy.

What's clear is that the series remains unafraid of thinking differently, and it's helpful to remember that we're talking about a sport that's still only in its eighth season. Jamie Reigle took over as Formula E's CEO in 2019, and last week I spoke to him about how the series has progressed and what we should look forward to in the next few years.

Enlarge / Stoffel Vandoorne, Mercedes Benz EQ, EQ Silver Arrow 02 during the Berlin E-Prix II at Berlin Tempelhof Airport on Sunday August 15, 2021, in Berlin, Germany. Next year this team will become part of McLaren Racing. (credit: Carl Bingham / LAT Images)

McLaren Racing is set to enter Formula E next season. Rumors had been circulating that the storied Formula 1 team was expanding into the electric single-seater series alongside other new activities like Extreme E and IndyCar, but on Saturday morning the news became official.

"McLaren Racing always seeks to compete against the best and on the leading edge of technology, providing our fans, partners, and people with new ways to be excited, entertained, and inspired," said Zak Brown, McLaren Racing CEO.

"Formula E, like all our racing series, fulfills all those criteria. As with all forms of the sport we participate in, Formula E has racing at the center but will be strategically, commercially, and technically additive to McLaren Racing overall. I firmly believe that Formula E will give McLaren Racing a competitive advantage through greater understanding of EV racing, while providing a point of difference to our fans, partners and people and continuing to drive us along our sustainability pathway," Brown said.