There’s yet another all-electric racing series coming to town. SuperCharge is a road car series with eight events planned for 2022. It aims to span Europe, the U.S., the Middle East, and China by bringing road-ready EVs to city streets across the globe. In a lot of ways, it sounds like Formula E’s compact utility vehicle equivalent.
There are some big names behind the series. Co-founders Rob Armstrong and Max Welti have plenty of racing experience, with Armstrong serving as Stewart and Jaguar Formula 1 team commercial director and, more recently, he global head of motorsport for World Rallycross promotor IMG. Welti was formerly part of the Sauber F1 team before becoming principal of the Swiss A1 GP team and director of Lamborghini’s motorsport program.
Together, they’re envisioning an electric series contested by a car called the SC01, which is based off of a crossover road car that hasn’t been announced yet. The car will be powered by a 40Kwh battery that can drive both front and rear axles and should give a 0 to 97 km/h time of under 2.5 seconds. The chassis will be standard across all cars, but teams will be able to fit them with custom bodywork to reflect their respective manufacturers. The cars will also be charged by existing charging frameworks.
There will be eight teams consisting of two cars each, and the race weekends will be formatted a little like a rally weekend. There will be 15 different races on a mixed-surface circuit that features a jump, a joker lap, and water obstacle. Events will consist of four heats, two semi-finals, and a big finale. The bite-size event structure is designed to appeal both to racing fans and to new fans who aren’t interested in sitting around for a single multi-hour event.
It should kick off in 2022, but prototype vehicles are scheduled to be finished late in 2021. Tanner Foust, too, has been involved in the design process.
Other than that, details are fairly sparse. It sounds a little bit like Formula E and Extreme E had a baby that got really into modified stock car racing. I’m definitely here for anyone who wants to take electric cars racing, but it admittedly feels like there’s a new series popping up every few weeks. I’m a little sceptical about SuperCharge, especially since it’s borrowing pretty heavily from other EV racing series, but I’m hoping they’ll prove me wrong.