The company that designs and supplies the current Formula E battery, Atieva, is set to be the provider of the spec front powertrain that will be used as part of the Gen3 design next year.
The Race can reveal that the US-based company is believed to have recently confirmed a deal to be the supplier of what is known as ‘the front powertrain kit’ for all Gen3 Formula E cars, the final design of which is set to be visually revealed in the coming weeks.
Atieva’s component will be part of the chassis and front powertrain kit which was won via an official tender process by Spark Racing Technologies last year.
The front powertrain kit includes the Motor Generator Unit (MGU), Motor Control Unit (MCU), transmission and driveshafts, and has a brief to be as compact and as light as possible. The target maximum regen for the frontal powertrain is required to be 250kW.
Atieva was founded in 2007 and initially supplied batteries and powertrains on a customer basis. Many executives in the company are ex-Tesla staffers, including Peter Rawlinson, who was also chief engineer at Lotus Cars between 1994 and 1998.
The company changed its name to Lucid Motors in 2016 to design and manufacturer its own cars, the first of which is the Lucid Air, which is planned to be produced from its new AMP-1 facility in Casa, Grande Arizona. The Air utilises a front MGU package in its design.
This was paid for largely by a deal agreed in 2018 with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia as part of its Vision 2030 policy of building a more sustainable future economy in the country.
Work on the first phases of design for the Gen3 car is being completed in the first two quarters of 2021, with initial crash test dates set for August.
Single development cars are planned to be delivered to Formula E manufacturers that commit to the new iteration of rules in January 2022, and race cars are planned to delivered for August 2022.
Both the FIA and Atieva would not provide comment on the plans when approached by The Race recently.
