F1's Rosberg: motor racing's future 'sustainable'

(Former F1 world champion Nico Roseberg) ''The future of motor racing is sustainable.’’

That’s according to former Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg.

Despite a gas-guzzling reputation, Formula 1 plans to be net-zero carbon by 2030.

But some unfavorable comparisons have been made to the all-electric Formula E series.

So, can the two co-exist? According to Rosberg, the answer is yes.

In London for the Formula E Prix, Rosberg told Reuters that even though FE now has a significant manufacturer presence… F1 will always have its place.

"You've got Formula E being the pinnacle of electric motor racing and then I think you'll have Formula 1 being the pinnacle of synthetic fuel motor racing. And both are very exciting paths and both can have a very positive impact on our on our world.’’

Days after winning the 2016 Formula One World Championship, Rosberg retired.

He's now a shareholder in Formula E and runs his own Extreme E team, FE’s all-electric off-road sister competition.

He has also invested in numerous start-ups working in sustainable mobility.

''….the emissions that we’re blowing out in the mobility space is huge, it's a huge percentage, up to 20 percent in some places. So, both are important. And for climate change, it's electric mobility and the energy transition that's going to be a big, big driving force there in the positive direction and for road safety, it's going to be autonomy.”

For decades F1 was seen as the auto industry’s incubator for motoring innovation, a title now being claimed by Formula E.

Christian Silk is team principal of FE Team Nio 333.

He says their electric cars are almost twice as efficient as Formula 1 cars.

The energy created when the electric version brakes feeds back into its battery to charge it up again…

rather than being burned to create heat and pollution.

“Formula E in five years time, the technology on the motors, the batteries, the control systems is accelerating at such a rapid rate. There's a lot of very smart engineers in this formula and as we work longer on it, we realise rather rich vein of development. So certainly we will harvest more energy under braking. We will release more energy under acceleration and our batteries will allow us to go further. But that's happening now. We see that every year we're getting better and better at that. But I think also formula E, we're trying to spearhead the lead in terms of sustainable sport, sustainable motor sport. So behind the scenes, the bits you don't necessarily see we're working very hard on to try and cut our carbon footprint as a sport and we're working very hard on logistics, on foods, on materials to try and improve the sustainability of the whole sport. And I'm really hopeful the work we do on sustainability can carry forward to other sports.”