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Comment by exDM69 | Hacker News Reader

Does Formula E still have the driver change cars mid race because the batteries are depleted? That's what they did in their first few years.

I don't watch it, not because there would be anything wrong with the cars but the tracks they race on aren't great.

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They no longer do this. In yesterday’s race Felipe Massa finished with 0.5% of charge left, but most of competition was at 3%.

It’s a league with a lot of overtaking, small circuits and confusing realisation - its super hard to know who’s who on track without prior research because they never display which car number is who during race - something that’s a must have when most of the grid is black and red variation. Also because circuits are small and street tracks, there is a lot of camera hopping which makes it hard to get idea of the pace.

I feel they should do three races 35min+1 lap on proper race track instead, but maybe theres reason against it?

They've wanted to concentrate on street circuits in cities. Traditional series (F1, IndyCar, etc.) generally have troubles getting permission to run city street circuits (and yes, I know they exist for both of those, just saying the permits are hard to get, at least initially) in some part due to noise. Since the FE cars are essentially no noise, they have tried to go to cities that may not have other races.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of street circuits, but the FE races tend to be pretty good. I too would prefer to be on "proper" tracks, but that hasn't been the goal of FE, at least for now.

No. Car swaps ended with the introduction of the Gen2 car:

https://www.fiaformulae.com/en/discover/cars-and-technology

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