Surely even you tire of racing vintage Formula One cars occasionally, yearning for something more futuristic, more efficient—potentially, even, something so quiet you can still make yachting plans for next weekend over the sounds of the actual car. You’re in luck, because Formula E is selling its old race cars.
Formula E and its all-electric racers have been around for four seasons now, meaning its first-generation cars are aging and on the way out. But instead of sitting in storage in some remote location for the rest of their lives, Bloomberg reports that these cars are going to be up for grabs on the secondary market.
Rather than advertising it, Bloomberg reports, Formula E is just letting word get around. Sounds like it fits right in with the yacht stuff.
Formula E will sell 40 cars for between $200,000 and $289,000, according to Bloomberg. That’s about half of what the series paid for each before leasing to teams, and Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag told Bloomberg that all 40 cars have now been raced and returned to the series for sale—including potential sales to some of the race teams that want to keep their cars, he said.
But if you want one, too, there are some things you should probably know about the cars first. From the story:
The first generation of electric racing cars, which closed out a four-year runat the ABB FIA Formula E Championship in Brooklyn, N.Y., last month, isn’t perfect. Sometimes, the whirr of the motor sounded like dental-cleaning tools. Limits on the battery capability meant that a driver had to make a pit stop midway to swap cars in order to complete the 40-lap race. […]
“The current cars are still fit for purpose. They’ve provided us with four seasons of exciting, intense, and unpredictable racing,” says Agag. “I know there’s a lot of interest from collectors and they could even be used for racing purposes.”
In the four years since the cars were introduced, battery technology has advanced to the point that the next generation of electric race cars will be able to complete a 45-minute timed race on a single charge. The new cars—and this new format, which is being changed from 40 laps—will debut at next season’s first race, to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital in December.
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This could be great, depending on who buys the cars. It would be one of those “Ah, finally” moments to test limits of Formula E cars outside of the tracks predetermined for them to race on, since details like speed capabilities on the cars have been murky since they came out, and Formula E’s small, tight circuits made those details less relevant.
But all of that is a big “if,” unless Formula E decides to give a Craigslist special and drop that $200,000 price down to $2,000 for folks like your neighborhood Jalopnik staff to afford.
That won’t happen, though, because plenty of people will surely pay a premium for the freedom to race vehicles quiet enough to let them plan their next boating trip at the same time. Multi-tasking!
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