QUESTION OF SPORT

The standard Ioniq 5 N sweeps the hot hatch title, and now there's an even racier version. Can it convince us electric motorsport isn't a total waste of time?

- OLLIE KEW

When I span a Formula E car off a Swedish racetrack last summer and messily biffed the front wing into the gravel, the people from Formula E weren’t overly bothered. When I later wrote about the experience in this magazine and remarked the car was an impressive piece of engineering for a sport no one gave a flying wotsit over, they were quite cross.

And promptly emailed me lots of METRICS and FEEDBACK that demonstrated I was, in fact, WRONG. Formula E is a worldwide household name. A phenomenon. Bigger than Jesus, with more evangelical followers. Apparently. Walk down any high street in the land and you can’t move for kids in full Formula E team kit and queues outside bookies taking punts on the next ePrix.

And whoodathunkit, turns out Extreme E – the off-roading identity crisis world championship designed to “raise awareness of ecological disaster” – is also growing faster than crypto. “A global audience of more than 144 million viewers” crowed a recent statement.

“A total of 36,334 social media posts were published about the 2023 Extreme E campaign, resulting in 2.1 billion ‘potential’ impressions and 109.8 million engagements.” Funny that. I had a look on its YouTube channel to save you the bother and the last few race highlights videos have amassed a mighty total of some 6,500 views each.

Electric motorsport is rubbish. The cars themselves are clever bits of kit but something – whether it’s the lack of noise, any inherent danger or the whiff of environmental virtue signalling – hasn’t captured the viewing public’s imagination.