🌐 Built for the EV Generation: Formula E Energizes 500 Million Global Race Fans

For nearly a year, we’ve been sharing stories from the front lines of the global transition to a low-carbon future—a transformation now measured in trillions.

To gather those insights, we speak with the world’s leading climate innovators.

The solutions we track don’t just cut emissions. That’s table stakes. Supercool solutions outperform the status quo. They grow margins, accelerate adoption, and upgrade modern life.

They’re faster. Cheaper. Smarter. Better designed. They fit how we want to live—and amplify what we aspire to.

These thoughts were swirling in my head as I spoke with Roger Griffiths, Team Principal of Andretti Formula E.

Roger is not the most likely candidate to lead an electric car racing team. He’s a self-professed petrolhead whose career spanned Indy, Le Mans, and F1 before he made the leap. Then again, the same could be said for everyone else who was there at the start.

When Formula E launched in 2014, it was charting new territory with massive ambitions but a vehicle and tech platform that underwhelmed.

“I saw the car for the first time, and to be honest, I was not impressed,” Roger told me. “It was a pretty rudimentary electric powertrain and a very big battery, very heavy battery with not a great deal of energy.”

The first-ever Formula E race took place that year in Beijing. And all of Roger’s suspicions were confirmed. Even the formation lap before the race start—standard procedure in motorsport—felt absurd.

“It was the slowest you've ever seen. Literally, it was like 30 miles an hour. We had such a finite, ludicrously low amount of energy. Anything that you spent on that lap was compromising your race.”

So, they scrapped it. There would be no standing on ceremony. No clinging to tradition. Only a recognition that to build an all-electric racing series, they’d have to do things differently—maybe everything.

Twelve years and 500 million global racing fans later, the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship still doesn’t have all the answers. And that’s okay. What it does have is more valuable: a culture built on a shared mission, trust, risk-taking, and going really really fast. 

Get the culture right, and the low-carbon future starts to lap the field.

Here’s the playbook.

Start with Reputation

Formula E clearly didn’t begin with speed or range. It began with credibility.

Michael Andretti. Alain Prost. Sir Frank Williams. Richard Branson. These were racing legends, legacy builders, and team owners. Icons who didn’t need another project—but showed up anyway.

That mattered. It sent a message to everyone watching: this was serious racing.

“We can’t afford this to fail,” Roger said. “Too many people have too much invested.”

That credibility bought the sport time, just enough to get the first season off the ground.

Collaborate, Then Compete

Everyone wants to win. There’s prize money, sponsorship dollars, and prestige at stake. But as much as the sport is team versus team, each can only succeed individually if Formula E succeeds collectively.

It comes back to culture.

Instead of holding tight to proprietary team secrets, Formula E teams often share fixes. They meet weekly. They debate among one another, align, and keep moving.

“We're fiercely competitive once those lights go green and we go racing, but we're able to talk sensibly about it on Monday morning after the Sunday afternoon race,” says Roger.

He is currently in his second tour as Chairman of the Formula E Teams Association.

“We feel that we have not only a responsibility to our sponsors, owners, drivers, and fans to do as well as we can individually, but we have a responsibility to the sport, to make the sport as good as it can be for all of us. We need to work together to grow.”

Innovate the Tech—but Don’t Blow the Budget

The first Formula E cars had 150 kW of power and couldn't finish an entire race. Drivers had to switch cars halfway through.

Fast forward a dozen seasons, and they’re running over 600 kW on a single battery.

Translation:

• 0 to 60 in 1.82 seconds

• 200 mph top speeds

• Software tuned for high performance on tight city circuits.

Formula E has also been the R&D lab for several commercial EV applications.

Jaguar improved the I-PACE’s range thanks to software work from the track. BMW used its i3 engineers to co-develop race systems and push learning back into the road car pipeline. The result is a direct feedback loop between race technology and road car development—fast, tangible, and measurable.

But there are boundaries. Formula E made an early decision to keep the battery uniform across teams to avoid triggering an arms race that could drive costs through the roof.

Here’s Roger:

"By having the battery held constant, it gives us a level playing field in that area. And it still gives the manufacturers lots of opportunity to develop technology around the electric motor powertrain, the powertrain piece, but it keeps costs under control as well. It’s still very expensive, but it could be an awful lot more expensive."

It’s Racing for the Uber-Lifestyle

Formula E has never exclusively targeted motorsport fans. From day one, the objective has been to reach a broader sports audience and attract a generation that sees cars differently.

Races take place in cities, not on remote circuits. They last 45 minutes. The atmosphere feels more like a festival than a race weekend.

“Many of the people that come to our races, the younger audience, have no interest in owning or driving a car,” says Roger. “With Uber, with really good public transportation in many of the cities, and the inconvenience and expense of owning a car, we’ve got to cater to that crowd. And I think Formula E has recognized that.”

Formula E succeeds not by leaning into nostalgia or tradition. It’s about meeting people where they are—and giving them something new and worth showing up for.

Try What Others Won’t

Attack Mode. Pit Boost. Vote-to-boost. Formula E has permission to experiment, and it uses it.

Some ideas flopped. Fan Boost was too easy to rig and quietly retired. Others, like Attack Mode, stuck and became part of the race-day dynamic.

“I remember when Alejandro Agag [CEO of Formula E], we were in a meeting in Geneva,” Roger told me. “He first came up with this concept of Attack Mode, which is straight out of Super Mario Brothers.”

You run over something on the racetrack, your car accelerates, you go faster, and then you're whizzing past everybody else.”

“The old me would’ve said, ‘What a stupid idea,’ The new me says, ‘I’m not sure—but I’ll give it a go.’”

That willingness to iterate in public makes the league feel alive. In motion. Ever evolving.

Climate Isn’t the Pitch. It’s the Platform.

Formula E’s mantra is Net Zero Since Day Zero. It didn’t have to bolt on ad hoc sustainability features and justify it for a P&L.

That opened the door to new sponsors from the very beginning. In the early years, partners like DHL were already asking about sustainability. Formula E gave them something to say yes to.

Now it’s part of how teams operate. Weekly environmental reviews. ISO certifications. Real conversations about clean power sourcing and footprint reduction.

Fail, Learn, Fix, Repeat

Formula E moves fast because it doesn’t pretend to get everything right the first time.

They’ve had rule failures. Communication breakdowns. Confused race results. And instead of doubling down or hiding, they adapt.

As chair of the Teams Association, Roger’s biggest focus is on alignment. If the teams don’t speak with one voice, they don’t get anything done.

That kind of governance doesn’t make headlines. But it’s what makes innovation stick and keeps the platform scaling. It’s not just good racing. It’s good management.

Brad Pitt made a movie about Formula 1. But the Moneyball thinking? That’s happening in Formula E.

Stay Fan-First

It all comes back to experience. Formula E didn’t just upgrade the drivetrain. It upgraded the format.

Short races. High drama. Global reach through free-to-air broadcasts in key markets. A fan base that spans continents and culture—tech-savvy, urban, and ready for something new. Not just racing fans. Not just gearheads.

“If we were only targeting racing fans,” Roger said, “our numbers would be 100 million. Not 500 million.”

This is what happens when you design a sport around the audience you want, not the one you inherited.

Supercool Takeaway

Formula E didn’t scale by chasing sustainability. It scaled by designing a better product and putting the right cultural signals around it.

That’s the unlock: sustainability may open the door, but it's the entertainment value that fills the grandstands.

Formula E nailed both. A shorter, sharper format for the streaming era. A tech-forward fan experience built for urban lifestyles. A willingness to break rules, test fast, and evolve based on data, not tradition. 

If you’re building for a changing world, this is the model:

• Lead with performance—let the climate benefits ride shotgun.

• Design for tomorrow’s behaviors, not yesterday’s fans.

• Treat innovation not as a single breakthrough, but as a continuous circuit.

The real story isn’t that Formula E went from skepticism to gaining 500 million fans.
It’s that it did so by making the future feel inevitable—and fun.

Listen to this podcast episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all other platforms.

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Stat of the Week: 44 Million

The Mexico City race delivered the biggest single-race TV audience in Formula E history this past season with a global audience of 44 million, including 11 million American viewers.

For context, this year’s Game 7 of the NBA Championship between Oklahoma City and Indiana drew 19.58 million viewers.

Quote of the Week:

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Related

While Formula E is the most followed all-electric racing championship, others are showcasing clean energy in equally thrilling formats. Here’s what else you need to catch up to.

FIA Extreme H – Hydrogen-Powered Off-Road Mayhem

What began as Extreme E, an electric off-road series racing through—and bringing awareness to—the planet’s most climate-stressed terrain, has evolved into Extreme H—the world’s first hydrogen racing series.

Same format. Same adrenaline. Whole new powertrain.

The new Pioneer 25 vehicles runs on hydrogen fuel cells and makes its debut this year. The goal: prove hydrogen can handle the heat, the torque, and the unpredictable terrain of real-world racing conditions.

FIM MotoE™ World Championship – Electric Two-Wheel Drama

Global electric motorcycle racing has been underway since 2019—and it’s gotten faster, tighter, and more competitive every year.

MotoE is the electric counterpart to MotoGP, with riders hitting speeds over 170 mph on all-electric machines. All bikes are currently supplied by Ducati, which took over from Energica in 2023 with the goal of further enhancing battery performance and power-to-weight ratios.

It’s a highly competitive championship, with photo-finish races, recognizable names, and real tech transfer into Ducati’s commercial EV development.

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Where Supercool traveled this week:

Podcasts:

Grounded in Maine: Josh Dorfman Talks to Businesses on Supercool

AUTM on the Air: Green by Design: Integrating Sustainability into Innovation Strategy with Josh Dorfman

Scale to Exit: Know Your Valuation, Know Your Why: Scaling Smart in the Climate Economy with Josh Dorfman

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