WHAT ABOUT BEHIND THE PACE CAR?
That’s also a no. The energy storage systems (ESS) do not hold enough juice to propel the car on full EV power at the speeds pace cars maintain, so there will be no EV running under caution with the ICE turned off to save the 100-percent renewable fuel from Shell that lives in the 18.5-gallon tanks.
SO WILL WE SEE DRIVERS USE EV POWER ALONE AT ANY POINT DURING EVENTS?
Yes!
But there’s one and only one situation where it’s allowed, and that’s while using reverse. The ERS’ motor generator unit (MGU) will be used to roll the car backwards. And if the engine is stalled, the driver can use the ERS to start the ICE and do whatever’s necessary — simply pull away or spin the car around — with the turbo V6 ICE.
BUT WHAT IF THE ESS IS EMPTY WHEN THEY’VE STALLED OR NEED TO GO IN REVERSE?
That’s another smart thing the series has done with the ERS.
The ESS won’t be allowed to reach a state of being at zero-percent charge. In fact, a decent amount of energy is always held and protected in the ESS just so drivers will have enough juice to restart their cars at least once.
Imagine if the maker of your phone gave you a charge range of 100 to zero percent, but in reality, zero was actually 20 percent, which covers you in case of an emergency, and that’s what IndyCar has done with its ESS.
Even though the ESS might be “empty” in terms of power no longer being available to make the car go faster, the ESS is configured to always have the driver’s back by holding onto extra energy in case of a stall or need to reverse.
Once the driver gets going again, they’ll need to harvest and replenish the ESS to refill the supercapacitors.
WILL GOING HYBRID ALLOW DRIVERS TO EXTEND THEIR FUEL RANGE, OR KEEP EVENTS FROM BECOMING “FUEL SAVE” RACES?
No, not really. But for the sake of marketing and promotions, there’s been an effort to suggest it’s a range extender.
Could it help to save tiny amounts of fuel? Yes, but this ERS package is all about adding power on top of what the ICE makes for power. It isn’t being used to give the ICE a break, since we know the cars will never run strictly on EV power (except for reversing), nor will the ERS be used to significantly share the responsibility of propelling the cars.
At most events, the ICE makes over 700hp (it’s lowered at the superspeedways), and the ERS is capable of helping with 60hp for short durations. If the ERS was putting up 250hp and that allowed the ICE to fall back to 500hp, there would be definite fuel saving going on. But that isn’t what’s happening, so there’s no significant fuel-saving opportunities with this first-generation hybrid IndyCar.
Granted, there will be slight fuel saving coming off slow corners where the ERS can assist acceleration — using the MGU to fill in some missing torque, known as “torque fill” when the ICE is at low rpm like coming off of the hairpin at Long Beach — by briefly easing the acceleration burden on the ICE, but the concept for IndyCar’s system has little to do with saving fuel and extending fuel range. It’s about giving the cars more punch.
LET’S GET INTO THE ACTION SIDE OF HYBRIDS. HOW IS THE POWER IT GIVES DIFFERENT FROM PUSH-TO-PASS?
This is another cool decision made by IndyCar.
Push-to-Pass, which only works on road and street courses, comes with a per-race time limit. At Mid-Ohio, for example, drivers have 200 seconds of turbo-based push-to-pass to use, which gives them about 60hp when it’s active. It’s an 80-lap race, and while they don’t have to use all of the P2P, drivers and teams will strategize when and where it’s best to apply that extra 60hp while it lasts.
With the ERS, there’s no time limit on its use, nor will it stop contributing its own 60hp before the end of the race. From the first lap to the last, drivers will have ERS power to use, even after they’ve run out of P2P.
SO, THE ERS IS ALWAYS ABLE TO GIVE 60HP…WHENEVER THE DRIVER WANTS IT ON EACH LAP?
Well, no.
OK, EXPLAIN THAT ONE.
IndyCar is going in F1’s direction with a per-lap energy usage cap. Instead of setting the rules like P2P where there’s a finite amount of time it will work in the race before it goes to sleep for good, IndyCar has set the Maximum Deployment Energy Per Lap structure where every driver has a limited amount of ERS power they can deploy each lap.
So while the ability to harvest and deploy energy never stops in the context of a complete race, the ESS will stop giving power to the driver — they can hit the deploy button on the steering wheel all they want, but it will be dead — once the maximum amount of energy per lap has been consumed.
If you burn all of the ESS energy you’re allowed to use on any lap, the ERS will go to sleep for the rest of the lap. But it comes back to life when it crosses the start/finish line and the process starts over again on the next lap and the next lap…
DOES IT GO TO SLEEP COMPLETELY, NO MATTER WHAT?
There’s one scenario where it will keep working, partially, at least.
I’m told by the series that while the ERS will go to sleep in the sense that it won’t deploy power after the per-lap limit has been hit, drivers can continue to harvest — provided the ESS isn’t fully charged — with the MGU, which means the ERS can be used to prepare for deploying on the next lap, but it won’t answer a driver’s call to give the 60hp until a new lap begins.