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Key Takeaways
- In just 12 years, Formula E has gone from a niche all-electric experiment that needed two cars to finish a race to a global championship with hundreds of millions of fans and cars that top 200 miles per hour.
- Formula E’s mission is baked into its DNA: it is the world’s first sport to earn B Corp certification and works as a real-time test lab for EV innovation.
The idea of an all-electric racing championship used to sound like science fiction, and in its debut season, Formula E’s cars needed a mid-race swap just to make it to the checkered flag.
“12 years ago, if someone said we’re going to create an all-electric racing championship, people might have thought you were absolutely crazy,” says Jeff Dodds, CEO of Formula E.
At the time, just 300,000 electric vehicles were sold worldwide and, according to Dodds, “they weren’t very good.”
“In our first season, we needed to have two cars to finish a race, because the battery wouldn’t last long enough,” he recalls.
Today, the technology has improved dramatically. Around 22 million EVs are expected to be sold this year, with BloombergNEF forecasting that figure could reach 35-40 million annually by 2030.
The transition is already accelerating in markets worldwide. And Formula E has spent the past 12 years positioning itself in the driver’s seat.
Altering the Formula
Before joining Formula E, Dodds spent years in the automotive industry, working for Volvo and later Honda, where he became deeply immersed in motorsport.
“We had our own Formula One team, MotoGP, British Superbikes, touring cars—they had everything,” he recalls.
That background explains why Dodds doesn’t view Formula One as a threat. If anything, he sees it as the benchmark for elite motorsport
“Believe it or not, whilst I was an F1 fan, I also followed Formula E before I came to work here,” Dodds says. “I have a good appreciation for the journey that Formula One’s been on,” he adds. “We’re similar, and then we’re very different.”
F1 and Formula E both use open-wheel, single-seater Formula racing cars. But there are some major distinctions. The main one is obvious from the name: Formula E is an all-electric racing league, while Formula One uses traditional internal combustion to power its cars.
This doesn’t just reduce Formula E’s carbon footprint — it changes the racing product itself. With limited energy at their disposal, the world’s best drivers must decide when to conserve and when to push, adding another layer of strategy to wheel-to-wheel racing. Dodds likens it to “a game of chess on the racetrack.”
He believes this appeals to racing fans differently than F1. “F1, for me, is nostalgic,” Dodds explains. “I know the drivers. I know their journeys. I love the locations they race at. Perhaps the bit I like least about it is the actual racing.”
He compares many F1 races to a “procession,” where fans often have a good idea of who will win before the engines start.
Formula E, by contrast, places a premium on parity.
“If you say to me, ‘Who do you think is going to win the London race?’ I legitimately would say it could be anybody.” Dodds says. “Everyone has a chance of winning that race. That’s pretty rare in motorsport.”
Races are designed to last under an hour, with plenty of overtakes and the kind of “thrills and spills” that can hold the attention of viewers accustomed to faster-paced entertainment.
Those differences are reflected in Formula E’s audience. Its fan base skews younger, is split nearly 50-50 between men and women, and has a particular interest in technology, sustainability and innovation. That audience has also attracted the attention of media giants. On August 11, Formula E, Disney+ and ESPN announced a landmark multi-year agreement that will make Disney+ the global streaming home of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship across 144 territories. In the U.S., races will stream on Disney+ alongside ESPN+ beginning with the 2026/27 season.
“I don’t mean to be disparaging because I watch it and enjoy it,” Dodds says, “but I don’t find F1 anywhere near as exciting as I find us.”
Speed without sacrifice
What sets Formula E apart from many companies now embracing sustainability is that its mission wasn’t created in response to a trend. Sustainability has been at the championship’s core from the beginning.
“If you’re a big business that decides you want to become more sustainable, that’s a very worthy thing,” Dodds says. “But you’re trying to reverse-engineer a more sustainable approach into your processes and the way you work. We’ve only ever had it as a core tenet of our business.”
Formula E was built around three goals: create an elite global racing championship, help accelerate the transition from combustion engines to electric vehicles and become the world’s most sustainable sport.
More than a decade later, Dodds believes the organization has a strong case for achieving that last goal. Formula E is the only sport in the world certified as a B Corp. This designation recognizes companies meeting high standards for social and environmental performance while committing to continuous improvement.
Sustainability is embedded throughout the race weekend. Events are powered by hydrogenated vegetable oil, single-use plastics are eliminated on-site, and the cars are charged using renewable energy. Formula E says its Gen4 car will also be 100% recyclable or reusable.
“My personal view is when people hear ‘sustainable,’ they often hear compromise,” Dodds says. “They think the product’s going to be more expensive, or not as good, because you’re trying to do it sustainably. And I think we are a brilliant argument against that, because we produce the fastest-selling race cars in the world and the most exciting racing, while being the most sustainable sport.”
World’s most exciting test lab
The racing is entertaining, but it isn’t what makes Formula E important. Much of the championship’s impact happens off the track, where it works alongside some of the world’s largest automakers to test EV technology that can eventually find its way into consumer vehicles.
Formula E has six manufacturers competing in its championship: Porsche, Jaguar, Nissan, Stellantis, Yamaha and Mahindra.
“One of the reasons they’re in is they treat the racetrack like a laboratory for testing technology that can make its way into their road cars,” Dodds explains.
“If you look at the latest Porsche Cayenne Turbo, it’s the most powerful production Porsche ever released — and it’s all-electric,” Dodds says. “It’s an incredible piece of machinery, and a lot of the technology in that car has been developed through, or come out of, Porsche’s Formula E program.”
He also mentions Formula E’s work with Jaguar’s I-Pace, where Jaguar discovered a way to install over-the-air software updates to their cars from an iPhone. “This is where we are in terms of the cutting-edge nature of the technology,” Dodds says. “You know, things are being developed and discovered on our racetrack that will find their ways into your cars incredibly quickly.”
Zero to 100
Dodds admits it’s difficult to imagine just how far Formula E could go. After all, the championship’s first 12 years have already produced growth that once seemed unimaginable.
“12 years ago, we had zero fans, zero TV audience, and a car. You needed two cars to do a race. The car finished at 130 miles an hour,” Dodds shares. “Ten years on, you’ve got 420 million fans, over half a billion TV audience, and you’ve got a car that accelerates to 100 kilometers in 1.6 seconds and races well over 200 miles an hour. It’s inconceivable how far we’ve come.”
Because of this, Dodds is reluctant to put hard limits on Formula E’s long-term growth. In an industry moving as quickly as electric vehicles, he believes setting objectives too far into the future can be more constraining than helpful.
“I definitely have an ambition, but I wouldn’t want to constrain that by tethering us to a set of targets that are too low,” he says. They’ve already gone from zero to 100 incredibly quickly. It’s impossible to tell how fast they’ll grow now.
Key Takeaways
- In just 12 years, Formula E has gone from a niche all-electric experiment that needed two cars to finish a race to a global championship with hundreds of millions of fans and cars that top 200 miles per hour.
- Formula E’s mission is baked into its DNA: it is the world’s first sport to earn B Corp certification and works as a real-time test lab for EV innovation.
The idea of an all-electric racing championship used to sound like science fiction, and in its debut season, Formula E’s cars needed a mid-race swap just to make it to the checkered flag.
“12 years ago, if someone said we’re going to create an all-electric racing championship, people might have thought you were absolutely crazy,” says Jeff Dodds, CEO of Formula E.
At the time, just 300,000 electric vehicles were sold worldwide and, according to Dodds, “they weren’t very good.”