FIA ESV – Group N ruleset for production EV racers

The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has launched FIA ESV, the federation’s first ever ruleset for fully electric race cars which are closely derived from road-going production vehicles, and which will be aimed at competitions at national as well as regional levels.

Approved by the FIA World Motor Sport Council last week, the FIA ESV ruleset is “designed to allow affordable, entry-level electric racing in compliance with the FIA’s standards for high-voltage safety,” the federation said.

The FIA ESV ruleset will, in spirit be like the past Group N series, aiming to bring racing with cars which have been minimally adapted from their road-going production equivalents. This will be open to both grand touring (GT) cars as well as four-door, coupé-shaped sports sedans – in reflection of road car market trends, says the FIA – with a maximum chassis height set to be 1,460 mm.

The production requirement for the Electric Sport Vehicle, or ESV series is that a homologated road car must have a minimum of 300 units produced over the first 24-month period since the road car’s homologation, and this is aimed at making prototype or low-volume production special models ineligible.

“The FIA ESV ruleset very much responds to the demands of the market. Having this set of technical regulations will allow the manufacturers’ customer racing departments to offer competition-ready variants of their electric cars, which should be a considerable source of revenue of them, much like GT3 is,” said FIA GT Commission president Lutz Leif Linden.

“It can even open the door for them to create their own one-make series. The fact that the regulations are inclusive and accommodate four-door cars reflects the latest trends on the road car market. We already see several manufacturers having sporty four-door grand coupes in their line-ups,” the FIA GT Commission president said.

The FIA ESV ruleset is open to both rear- and all-wheel-drive cars, with a stipulated minimum output of 300 kW or around 410 hp. The bodywork shape of FIA ESV race cars must be “fundamentally unchanged”, with exceptions given to extending wheelarches in order to accommodate wider racing wheels and tyres, along with additional cooling ducts.

Selected body panels such as the rear hatch and doors, rear wing and diffuser may be replaced with lightweight materials which maintain the original shapes of the items on the homologated road car.

The potentially wide-ranging selection of vehicles that may be eligible for the FIA ESV ruleset have prompted the FIA to give event organisers the option of grouping cars according to their performance levels, based on the Performance Factor methodology that has already been used in FIA competitions such as hill climb racing.

Performance Factor aims to create a value for each car based on its weight, power unit and aerodynamic performance, as well as transmission and chassis parameters, in order to enable different cars to compete against each other in groups based on their performance levels, says the FIA. For now, there is no date for an on-track debut for cars within the FIA ESV ruleset.

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