After finishing last season with six races in nine days in Berlin, the Formula E think-tank sat down to chart out the path for the new season.
With the Covid-19 still causing chaos all around the world, they needed to find a better solution than just cramming races into one city.
While they were busy putting in the framework to get the seventh edition up and going, they received a setback when two of the biggest manufacturers—Audi and BMW—announced their decision to pull out from the sport at the end of this season.
The biggies questioned the relevance of the championship for manufacturers. BMW stated that they have “essentially exhausted any opportunities for technology transfer” between its Formula E project and production cars.
Formula E CEO Jamie Reigle feels that both have jumped the gun.
“I can’t say we are happy that they left but we are fundamentally in a good space and will come through this period. There are many manufacturers who are in different phases of shifting to electric. There was lot of ambiguity when the series started in 2014 whether that shift would happen, and we had lot of vested interest pushing against that. Now it’s very clearly happening. The spoils will go to who are further along that curve,” said Reigle, who has previously worked with Manchester United and Los Angeles Rams in the NFL before moving to Formula E one and half years ago.
