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Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

I think it is shocking that after a century of motoring this idea of energy recovery from the brakes is 'new fangled'. It should have been made mandatory back in '73. Even if lithium batteries weren't available then every car has a battery, usually of the lead acid variety, plus there are things like flywheels that can store potential energy.

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Formula 1 is a sport. The game is about building the most performant machine within the constraints of the rules. There is a ton of technology that is prohibited in F1 (traction control, automatic gear shifting, ABS, etc) that has been part of road cars for decades. Rule changes tend to relax the constraints from time to time for some specific reason: such as better safety, better spectacle, or cost reduction. KERS (with its driver-controlled boost button) was introduced in 2009 mostly as an attempt to facilitate overtaking, since car aerodynamics had become so sophisticated that a car following another one would get a significant drop in downforce due to the turbulence of the car in front. On the other hand, the 2014 rules appear to have been enacted mostly to help teams lower their running costs.

I think it's time we have an F1 alternative with only unmanned cars where we aren't concerned by passenger safety and can focus on pure speed.

The competition between drivers is what makes me wake up at 4:45AM every two Sundays to watch the events live.

If I were interested in experiments about mechanical speed, I would just read research papers.

That's an intriguing thought, but I fear it would soon devolve into guided missiles ...

I'd watch that... F1 without drivers but with weapons... it'd be like a real live and super-expensive version of Mario Kart...

The intention behind the introduction of KERS and now ERS and current fuel restrictions was mostly to: a) make F1 more "green" b) make F1 a platform for development of technologies that are relevant for the road cars.

Active aero isn't one of those but ERS and fuel consumption are and you can see this stuff is making its way into the normal cars already. KERS is a gimmick maybe, but I'm happy that they're tackling the problem of fuel consumption.

That's not the point of the article.

> "the mainstream media and race commentators have struggled to explain all that well"

They're not trying to spin energy recovery as new. KERS already exists. They're trying to explain the current system, now named ERS, and its peculiar bits.

I think the more interesting part of the article is how the braking behavior changes when it goes from trying to store energy to using only the traditional brake. It never occurred to me that switching systems changes brake behavior.

True, however (in my parallel universe of ideal world), bus drivers, postal delivery drivers and every other road user should know how brake by wire works in practice. The foibles of it should be no big deal, like doing a hill start with a 'stick shift' car, something ingrained into you during a driving test.

F1 is driving at 10/10ths of the car's capability and unpredictability means you can't stay at 10/10ths - crash or go slower are your only options.

But but but perpetual motion machines violate the laws of physics ... therefore we should completely dump the idea of trying to conserve energy in such ways!

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