Electrification and the World Rally Championship. We’ve been here before.
Four years ago, the electric future seemed inevitable; the EV car market was growing, manufacturers were committing to an all-electric future and the FIA was finalizing the WRC’s 2022 ruleset, which featured the introduction of hybrid systems as a stop-gap until EVs were ready to go rallying.
Fast forward to last week’s World Motor Sport Council announcement that hybrids are to be ditched by the WRC for 2025, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that electric rallying had fallen off the WRC’s radar too.
But it hasn’t. The FIA’s technical department has been tasked with developing regulations for an all-electric formula, which will run alongside the current Rally1 class. David Richards, head of the FIA’s WRC Working Group, clarified the thinking of the sport’s governing body.
David Richards is planning for an electric future that isn't ready to get underway quite yet
“We believe we should follow the direction of the manufacturers,” he told a select group of media last week, including DirtFish. “If we are to be successful, we’ve got to listen to what the manufacturers are doing. And today, they’re clearly promoting electric vehicles. We feel that if the technology is going to be the mainstream technology of the future, then the WRC should adopt this.”
“We should move with the times and we should be a little bit ahead if possible. If we have demand from the manufacturers, which we have for electrification, if we have demand for hydrogen, we should be looking at these things and we should run them in parallel and get them up and running at the first opportunity.”
“One of the things we would like to do,” Richards added, “is engage with the current three manufacturers (Toyota, Hyundai and M-Sport Ford) and anyone else who’s looking to commit to the Championship in the design of that new spaceframe [2026-spec Rally1] chassis to accommodate and allow for these things for the future.”
Great, that sounds like a plan then: electric rally cars using the new Rally1 space frames. So when will this new electric category come into effect?
“At the earliest opportunity” read the FIA’s pressure release last week, while Richards stated the FIA’s new electric objective is “not a commitment about a specific date, it’s a commitment to align ourselves with the technologies of the future.”
In short, four years on from the announcement of the championship’s first set of hybrid regulations, the state of play remains largely the same; nobody really knows when or if electrification will come to the WRC.
But that won’t stop us from attempting to answer the question that fans have been posing since the EV revolution began: Can electric actually work in the WRC?
We took a closer look at the key factors impacting the WRC’s electric future.
The EV marketplace
Hyundai is ending the production of its i20 N and i30 N models; the all-electric Ioniq 5 N is on the verge of replacing it
If the old adage of ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ still rings true, then manufacturers’ interest in entering an electric WRC will depend on their commitment to developing EVs.
On this front, there seems to be a consensus among the world’s car companies; they’re all focused on an electric future across their fleet in key markets like the US and Europe, if not globally. The question is when does the marketplace become so EV-dominated that manufacturers won’t be interested in marketing anything else? Predictably, the answer is very complicated.
If we take the WRC’s current trio of Ford, Toyota and Hyundai, we can learn a little more: Ford want to be 50% electric by 2030, Toyota wants to sell 3.5 million EVs annually by 2030, and Hyundai wants to be one of the top three EV manufacturers in the world by the same year.
Stellantis performance brand Alpine is set to reveal a performance EV model based on the Renault 5 reboot; the Alpine A290_β show car was revealed last year as a teaser
On that evidence, 2030 is as good of a guess as any for when brands will no longer see value in investing in non-EV motorsport programs. But as Richards stated to the media last week, the FIA’s objective is to be ahead of the curve, which would surely put the implementation of an electric WRC formula a few years in front of the global marketplace.
Either way, it appears the marketplace will soon be ready, and therefore so should the WRC.
Range anxiety
At present, the biggest stumbling block for the introduction of EVs to the WRC is battery range. The technology simply isn’t there to get a car running on electric power only through the 50-odd kilometers of a standard WRC loop, let alone get through the road sections of the rally and then be able to re-charge back to 100% during a short service window.
Some impressive electric rally cars exist around the world right now, not least of which is Hayden Paddon’s Hyundai Kona EV, which completed demonstration runs during Rally New Zealand 2022. Paddon’s machine, however, is only made for short blasts, not endurance rallies.
Paddon Rallysport Group has been a leader in the rally EV sector; its Kona EV, built in cooperation with Manfred Stohl's STARD outfit, made its competition debut back in late 2020
There are three potential solutions to this problem: make the rallies shorter, change batteries at services, or wait for battery technology and charging infrastructure to become advanced enough to allow EVs to compete in the WRC’s current format.
The first option would be a hugely radical change, while the second somewhat diminishes the image of EVs given how much prestige is associated with a car’s range capabilities. It would seem then, that we will simply have to play the waiting game while battery technology improves, which if current manufacturers’ rhetoric is to be believed, it surely will over the next decade.
Charging infrastructure may take even longer to develop, but the WRC will almost certainly need to bring its own charging capability with it as it travels to remote locations around the globe.
Safety
The fire that destroyed both of Special One Racing’s all-electric Lancia Delta Evo-Es at last year’s World Rallycross Championship round at Lydden Hill has created a massive amount of questions about the safety of EVs in motorsport.
Both Lancia Delta Evo-e RX machines were turned to ashes after a fire broke out during the battery recharging process
Those concerns are still to be met with answers, but the thought of a Rally1 car laden with batteries crashing into the trees on a forest stage and causing an enormous fire will strike fear into the hearts of everyone associated with the WRC.
Put simply, safety must never be compromised. No corners can be cut in the race to implement electrification in the WRC no matter how much manufacturers wish to see EVs in the championship, and the FIA’s investigations into the viability of an all-electric WRC formula will surely have this issue as their top priority to address.
Whenever EVs do come to the series, the testing phase for these cars will surely be among the most extensive we’ve ever seen before an electric Rally1 car ever takes to the stages in anger.
What do the fans think?
The FIA was able to draw a somewhat surprising conclusion from its recent WRC fan survey regarding the popularity of electric cars in the series.
“A few things surprised us a little bit,” said Richards in his call with the media last week. “The fans weren’t interested in electric, for instance. They were not interested in shorter rallies. Those were two things that surprised us a little bit.
“They didn’t put sustainability high on their list of agendas. Yet we think it’s imperative from an organizational point of view.”
Therein lies a key problem for the championship: is there any point in investing in an EV-based future if no one will be watching?
Fans are the lifeblood of the sport; they’re the ones paying for the tickets, the Rally.TV subscriptions and putting their eyeballs on linear TV broadcasts that make the sport commercially viable. But the mood among supporters somewhat reflects the mood among most people when it comes to electrification right now. Most people don’t really know what to make of it.
Culturally, that might well change over the next decade, as EVs become more common and fans accept that we might have to embrace electric if the sport is to survive with manufacturer backing.
Like Formula 1’s move to far quieter V6 turbo hybrid engines in 2014, any change away from the current boisterous 1.6-liter WRC power plants will be seen as a massive loss. But over time, and if the competition on the stages is better than ever, then those fans might be won over by positive storylines the WRC is generating.
And that’s before someone decides to hook their EV rally car up with the soundtrack of a screaming V10.
