Lewis Hamilton Enters Extreme E: Now It's Serious
[Sept. 10, 2020]
I admit it, I figured Extreme E would disappear. The off-road racing series that’s slated to traverse the globe’s most exotic and endangered locations with teams competing in sprint races using EV trucks seemed so grandiose that it had to be a pipe dream floated by a fly-by-night environmentalist wannabe. But it’s looking like my initial assessment was incorrect, and Lewis Hamilton – yes, that Lewis Hamilton – is throwing it in my face.
X44, an Extreme E team headed by Lewis Hamilton, is tooling up to compete in the EV off-road series’ inaugural season.
I was convinced I was right. You see, while the world was entering lockdown due to COVID-19, Extreme E organizers were heftily doling out press releases packed to the gills with a fresh flow of partnerships and unbelievable TV packages, almost as if the world hadn’t just economically crashed. And all the while, the series was far from actually hitting any dirt – the launch date of the five-weekend race series is slated for Jan. 23-24, 2021, in Dakar – and there was limited information about the EV race trucks actually testing. Plus, while the series organizer is related to Formula E as a series founder, rather than using cutting-edge tech, Extreme E would utilize Formula E’s old battery technology for off-road motivation. Repurposing outdated tech is rarely a winning strategy.
Then Extreme E lobbed an easy one my way, all but proving my point for me. In late July, Extreme E announced that Fisker was interested in campaigning in the series. This wasn’t even a confirmed partnership – it was akin to someone promising to some day maybe, possibly giving someone else a promise ring.
“We feel thrilled at the prospect of having Fisker Inc., a pure EV manufacturer, join Extreme E for the start of the first championship,” Alejandro Agag, founder and CEO of Extreme E had said. “Creating the world’s most sustainable racing series is the perfect launch platform for their new Ocean SUV as well as providing a challenging testing environment for product durability.”
Fisker, it should be noted, doesn’t have a shiny reputation.
With this track record, Extreme E had to be a scam, right? But then on Sept. 8, 2020, Lewis Hamilton changed the game.
To be fair to Extreme E, I was already casting doubts on my own skepticism when, a week prior to the promise ring episode, Andretti Autosport had noted its interest in campaigning the series.
And then came Lewis Hamilton’s announcement of his new Extreme E team, X44:
“Extreme E is an exciting new sustainability initiative, and this is a great opportunity to be involved from the outset as a team founder. Of course, my ambitions and commitments with Mercedes in Formula One mean that I won’t be operationally involved in X44, but I’m excited to play a different role in this new series, one that brings my vision for a more sustainable and equal world to life.”
“Extreme E really appealed to me because of its environmental focus. Every single one of us has the power to make a difference, and it means so much to me that I can use my love of racing, together with my love for our planet, to have a positive impact.”
“Not only will we visit remote locations facing the front line of the climate crisis, we will also work closely with these locations and leading climate experts to share our knowledge and leave behind a positive legacy in each location which goes far beyond the race track.”
“As Founder of X44, I am looking forward to building my team around important values such as sustainability and equality. None of us are perfect and we all have improvements to make, but I am excited to use our platform to highlight the most serious issues facing our planet and the solutions we can all be part of.”
Granted, it doesn’t appear as if Lewis Hamilton will be driving in the series, but maybe I was wrong about Extreme E. Perhaps Extreme E, a series that, as the organizer says, “will race electric vehicles in five remote locations; arctic, desert, rainforest, glacier, and coastal; which are already damaged or severely under threat of climate change from a range of serious issues including melting ice caps, deforestation, desertification and rising sea levels,” is actually going to happen. We’ll find out for sure in the not too distant future, but for now, I’m coming around to the idea that Extreme E might happen, and it could be pretty darn cool.
(Images courtesy Extreme E)
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