Fans react during the Formula E World Championship at Portland International Raceway on June 24, 2023, in Portland, Oregon. | Photos by Mason Trinca for POLITICODavid reports on and coordinates coverage of the intersection of transportation and the electric grid for POLITICO's E&E News. He has written extensively on the trends and personalities that drive technologies like energy storage and solar power.
The crowds milling around this carefully curated fan village may not have realized that they were more than mere spectators. They were also test subjects in an experiment — parts sports business, part politics. The crowd’s response to the action over the ensuing eight hours would, of course, help determine the popularity of a young new sport. But it would also shape perceptions of the EV in general, and even of the presidential election in 2024.
To sell its agenda, the government needs voters to imagine these still-unbuilt factories — most of them in red-leaning Southern congressional districts — and tens of thousands of jobs still to come. The only thing that tangibly exists today is the vehicle itself. Voters might not like or understand regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency or Department of Energy loan programs, and lackluster sales figures suggest they don’t.
Longo is that rare person who can claim to have started a global motor sport series. That puts him in the same general league as Bill France, the man who founded NASCAR, though their circumstances could not be more different. In the 1930s, when France started what would become NASCAR, auto racing wasn’t a thing in the Depression-era South. Neither were mass spectator sports, other than baseball. France changed that.
“Our target has always been we cannot please everyone,” Longo said. “There are 600 million people who are fans of motor sport in the world today, while there are 8 billion people out there. So I think our opportunity is way bigger than just the fans of motor sport.” The person charged with erasing this environmental impact for Formula E is Julia Pallé, the vice president of sustainability. In an interview before the Portland race, the neatly dressed Frenchwoman delivered Formula E’s standard line: “We are basically mixing racing and reason so that they can powerfully coexist without compromise.”
“It’s giving you the credibility and legitimacy also of being part of the group of like-minded people that are setting the standard and going above and beyond,” Pallé said.No one experiences more range anxiety than a Formula E driver; the battery gets the car only 60 percent through the race.nergy isn’t a term that means much to the American race fan, unless it’s the caffeine buzz from a Red Bull.