Did you know that a Formula E car consumes just over 4 liters of gasoline per race?

It’s well known that electric powertrains are more efficient than combustion engines, but have you wondered how many liters of gasoline a Formula E car consumes per race?

The equivalence between liters of gasoline and kWh of battery isn’t direct, but is based on calorific value, with approximately 1 liter of gasoline equivalent to 9-10 kWh of energy (depending on the engine and efficiency, which is much lower for gasoline than for electric cars), making electric cars more efficient: a 60 kWh battery (similar to many electric cars) is about the same as 18-20 liters of gasoline, but travels much further.

These are the key details to know:

• Gasoline calorific Value: approximately 9.6 kWh per liter.
• Diesel calorific Value: approximately 10.7 kWh per liter (denser).
• Internal combustion engine efficiency: modern gasoline engines convert only about 30% of the energy in gasoline into motion, wasting the rest as heat.
• Electric engine efficiency: much higher (about 80-90%), converting almost all of the electrical energy into motion.

Practical Example (Calculation)

To obtain 60 kWh of energy from gasoline, you need about 60 / 9.6 ≈ 6.25 liters of gasoline. However, to travel a certain distance, an electric car will use 60 kWh, while a gasoline car will waste much more to obtain the same useful energy, covering fewer kilometers with its “equivalent liter.”

In Summary

It’s not just a question of “how many liters is a kWh,” but of how much of that energy is actually used. An electric car is inherently more efficient, so even if the battery “contains” less energy in terms of weight and volume than a gasoline tank, it can travel greater distances thanks to its greater conversion efficiency.

Let’s do the math on Formula E

The Formula E Gen3 Evo battery maintains a similar battery capacity to the standard Gen3, approximately 54 kWh in total, but despite this total capacity, less than 40 kWh is used during a race.

Consequently, dividing these 40 kWh that Formula E uses for a race by 9.6 (the kWh per liter of gasoline), the result is 4.166… ​​that’s the equivalent of the gasoline consumption of a Formula E car during a race.

#MarceloPadin #theEMNteam

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