With Porsche's 919 Hybrid program now officially ending at the close of the 2017 season, they've announced that after a sabbatical year, they'll be joining Formula E in 2019. At the announcement, Formula E launched this video featuring some of Porsche's motorsport accomplishments, including 19 overall victories at Le Mans, their time at Dakar, in rally, Formula 1, Indycar, and so much more. Check out the video for a touching entry announcement from the series.
Formula E is already packed with manufacturers, including BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Citroen DS, Renault, Jaguar, Mahindra, and Faraday Future (can they be considered a manufacturer?). It's fair to say that Porsche has the most racing experience of all of those teams, and their recent work with battery and electric motor technology in LMP1 is going to be a boon for the team. Porsche has already confirmed that they will not be releasing anyone from the LMP1 team, so they'll have plenty of engineering and driver talent to pull from in order to make their Formula E debut as successful as possible. According to their press release, they've already begun taking the first steps toward developing the new car. It's interesting that both Mercedes and Porsche announced their interest in Formula E in the same week. Is this perhaps the start of a great cross-town rivalry in Stuttgart?
Michael Steiner, Member of the Executive Board of Porsche AG responsible for Research and Development:
“Entering Formula E and achieving success in this category are the logical outcomes of our Mission E project. The growing freedom for in-house technology developments makes Formula E attractive to us. Porsche is working with alternative, innovative drive concepts. For us, Formula E is the ultimate competitive environment for driving forward the development of high-performance vehicles in areas such as environmental friendliness, efficiency, and sustainability.”
Fritz Enzinger, VP in charge of Porsche's LMP1 program:
“Building up the Le Mans team from scratch was a huge challenge. Over the years, we have developed an incredibly successful and professional team. This will be our basis going forward. I am certain that we will maintain our high level in Formula E. Confidence is high, and we are excited to get started.”