Category Archives: innovation

The Friction Tax

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What 30 Years of Engineering Taught Me About Where AI Actually Helps

Every technical professional knows the feeling: you have the expertise to solve a problem, but most of your day is consumed by overhead. File management. Data formatting. Debugging input decks. Building GUIs around calculations. Navigating systems designed for a different era. Report templates. Status updates.

At DeQuorum we call this the friction tax — the procedural overhead between you and the value-creating work you’re actually trained for. And across thirty years in engineering, from crash simulation to Formula 1 to autonomous vehicles, I’ve watched that tax shrink with every tool generation. What happened next was always the same: the work didn’t shrink with it. It expanded.

Hand-Meshing and Mainframes

When I started as a stress analyst at GM Holden in the early 1990s, crash simulation meant hand-meshing CAD models. You placed finite elements manually on geometry surfaces — squares and triangles, one at a time. The analysis software, LS-DYNA, used text-based keyword files where a misplaced parameter in the wrong column could silently corrupt your entire simulation. Jobs ran overnight on mainframes, sometimes for weeks on machines in America. A misplaced decimal in a contact definition could waste a fortnight of compute time.

Debugging consumed more engineering time than actual structural analysis. The friction tax was enormous — probably 70% of a crash analyst’s time went into file preparation, error-checking, and compute management. Maybe 30% went into the engineering judgment that the whole exercise was supposed to be about.

Then HyperMesh arrived and automated the meshing.

In the 3D solid modelling domain, CATIA could now auto-mesh solid models — the element quality wasn’t as good as hand-placed elements, but the volume of work you could do meant better overall insight into structural behaviour. Both domains of structural analysis programmes went from five or six configurations to hundreds.

The friction shrank. The engineering expanded. Nobody went home early.

The Pascal-to-Visual-Basic Moment

I saw the same pattern in programming. In the Pascal era, building an engineering tool meant spending 80% of your time on the GUI and 20% on the actual calculations. Every button, every input field, every display widget had to be hand-coded. The engineering logic — the bit that actually mattered — was almost an afterthought squeezed into the remaining time.

When I moved to Visual Basic — which purists considered a Mickey Mouse language — that ratio flipped. Suddenly, 80% of my time went into the engineering logic, 20% into the interface. The compute speed wasn’t dramatically different. What changed was where I spent my time.

This is the point that most discussions about AI tools miss entirely. People focus on raw compute power — how fast the processor is, how many cores you have, how quickly the solver converges. But for most engineering work, the binding constraint has never been the computer. It’s been the human. Specifically, it’s been the friction between the human and the valuable work.

A faster processor that still requires three hours of manual file setup is worth less than a slower processor with an intelligent pre-processor that gets you running in twenty minutes. The bottleneck moves from compute to cognition — and then from cognition to friction around cognition.

The Oxford Laboratory

I recently visited a laboratory at University of Oxford conducting medical research. They had a million-dollar machine for analysing test compounds. The bottleneck wasn’t the machine — it was deciding which tests to run and setting up the Excel files to drive it. The machine sat idle while researchers wrangled data formats. AI attacking that friction could push utilisation from 40% to 90%, making experiments that weren’t previously worth the setup cost suddenly viable.

The total research output expands because the friction between having a hypothesis and testing it collapses. Not because the machine got faster. Not because the researcher got smarter. Because the tax on their time shrank.

The Race Car: Where Friction Meets Complexity

In racecar engineering, the design space is enormous and highly non-linear. Aerodynamics are non-linear. Tyres are non-linear. The interactions between them — downforce affecting tyre loading, which affects temperature, which affects grip, which changes the aero platform, which changes downforce — create a coupled system that defies simple optimisation. Add fuel load, track evolution, weather, strategy, and regulatory constraints, and you have a design space so large that no team can explore more than a fraction of it. In fact, we rely on the rules to constrain the total problem space to a degree!

AI does two things here. First, the familiar friction reduction: build parametric models faster, automate iteration, and generate report templates. Second, something qualitatively different — surrogate modelling, where neural networks approximate the non-linear physics relationships trained on CFD and tyre data, enabling exploration of the full design space at viable speed.

But surrogate models are interpolators, not extrapolators. They work within the training envelope. Outside it — novel concepts, new tyre compounds, regulation changes — they produce confidently wrong answers. The engineer who understands what the model can’t tell them wins the race.

This is the expert advantage in practice: domain knowledge doesn’t just help you use AI better. It tells you when to stop trusting it.

The Pattern

Today, with AI assistance, I can rebuild engineering tools that took months in days, and add optimisation layers that weren’t previously worth the development effort. The pattern is identical across three decades and multiple tool generations:

The tool arrives. The friction shrinks. The expert’s output expands. The job changes shape rather than disappearing.

In economics, this pattern has a name. William Stanley Jevons identified it in 1865, watching British coal consumption rise as steam engines became more efficient. Make something cheaper to use, and people use more of it. The Jevons paradox.

Make crash analysis cheaper, and engineers do more crash analysis. Make experimentation faster, and researchers run more experiments. Make design iteration cheaper, and teams explore more of the design space. The demand for the output is elastic — there’s always more crash safety to improve, more compounds to test, more lap time to find. Efficiency creates expansion, not contraction.

But There’s a Question

Every previous friction reduction in my career led to more work, not less. Hand-meshing to HyperMesh. Pascal GUIs to Visual Basic. Overnight mainframe runs to desktop clusters. The Jevons paradox has held true for 30 years.

But I’ve also watched the administrative infrastructure around engineering teams shrink continuously — and I watched it happen so gradually that nobody remarked on it at the time.

When I first worked at General Motors , every memo was printed out, and everyone on the CC list received a physical copy, stapled and placed in their pigeonhole. Someone’s job was to print, collate, and distribute those memos. The BCC — blind carbon copy — existed because in the days of actual carbon copy paper, you could add extra recipients to the copy list without the primary recipients knowing. Someone had to manage that distribution. Email didn’t just speed up that work. It made the entire role vanish. And the economy didn’t need more memo distribution then. It needed zero.

When I arrived at McLaren Racing in the early 2000s, we still had the last remnants of having a tea lady — a very British institution. I’d seen something similar when I finished university in Australia in the 1990s. The role existed because keeping engineers productive meant having someone bring tea to their desks rather than losing 15 minutes in the canteen queue. Better kitchen facilities and cultural shifts eliminated the role entirely. Nobody’s job expanded to absorb the freed capacity. The friction just disappeared.

The drawing office. The print room. The filing department. The data entry team. The pool of secretaries. All progressively automated away over decades.

Here’s what’s different about this moment: AI is attacking all the remaining friction layers simultaneously. Setup automation, code generation, file debugging, iteration management, report writing, data formatting — every layer of overhead that previously shrank one at a time is collapsing at once.

For the engineers, that’s the Jevons paradox in overdrive — more output, more exploration, more ambition. But for the roles that existed to manage the friction itself? That’s a different story entirely. And it leads to an uncomfortable question about whether the economic optimism that applies so reliably to expert technical work extends to everyone else.

This is the first in a three-part series on AI, friction, and the future of work. Part 2 explores a fundamental limit on AI’s economic impact — the \”speed of light\” problem. Part 3 examines what happens to workers whose entire job is the friction AI eliminates.

DeQuorum http://www.dequorum.tech/insights

Mark Preston is a mechanical engineer and motorsport executive with 30+ years in Formula 1 , Formula E (five Championships in the FIA – Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile Formula E World Championship as Team Principal of DS Automobiles TECHEETAH Formula E Team ), and autonomous vehicles. He writes about engineering leadership, AI strategy, and the lessons motorsport teaches about decision-making under uncertainty.

Mike Potts is an entrepreneur and technology leader working at the intersection of data, AI, and autonomous systems. He founded StreetDrone , a UK pioneer in autonomous delivery vehicles (acquired by Oxa in 2024), and earlier built and exited Elisa Interactive, a digital data and analytics consultancy acquired by Havas Media Network , where he later served as Chief Data Officer. He writes about AI-native systems, decision intelligence, and how data-driven technology is transforming mobility and infrastructure at DeQuorum .

Navigating Speed, Strategy & Innovation in Motorsport and Beyond

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In this in-depth conversation, Mark Preston discusses his career at the forefront of motorsport and mobility innovation. He talks about his engineering roles at Arrows and McLaren. He also discusses founding Super Aguri F1, winning titles in Formula E, and pioneering autonomous vehicle technology at Oxa. The discussion explores leadership, strategy, marginal gains, AI, and building high-performance teams.

Conversation Highlights

In a wide-ranging discussion, Mark reflects on a career defined by pushing the boundaries of engineering, leadership, and innovation. His journey spans from the racetrack to autonomous technology. He began as a simulation and stress engineer in Australia. Later, he moved to the UK to pursue his Formula 1 dream. He eventually worked with Arrows and McLaren. A turning point came when he shifted from pure engineering to business leadership. He founded Super Aguri F1. He later achieved championship success in Formula E with DS Automobiles and now Lola & Yamaha. Throughout, the constant has been a deep commitment to learning, experimentation, and building high-performing teams.

Motorsport is an unparalleled arena for decision-making under pressure. Mark highlights that performance is tested every two weeks. Even small wins, like optimising pit stops or improving team communication, compound into success. Drawing from experience at McLaren, he emphasises the importance of institutional memory. He stresses the need for scientific rigour and structured processes over black art intuition. He also discusses how strategic clarity is critical in racing. Iteration is also vital. Scenario planning helps build resilient, innovative organisations across sectors.

Beyond motorsport, Mark shares insights from his leadership at Oxa. He is applying engineering knowledge to autonomous vehicles in ports and logistics. His focus remains on practical, scalable use cases — leveraging off-highway environments and deep software integration. AI and machine learning reshape both racing and autonomy. Mark combines technical depth with organizational clarity in his approach. He continually strives to stay on the “bleeding edge” where no one has the answers — yet.

Key Timestamps

  • 00:00 – Introduction & career overview
  • 04:15 – Lessons from McLaren & Arrows
  • 10:30 – Leadership in high-pressure environments
  • 17:45 – Marginal gains & small wins
  • 27:20 – Transition to autonomous vehicles
  • 38:10 – AI & machine learning in motorsport
  • 47:00 – Scenario planning & strategy

Follow My Work

To keep up with my latest work in motorsport, autonomous vehicles, and innovation, connect with me on LinkedIn or explore more projects at www.MarkAndrewPreston.com.


The StreetDrone Origin Story

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STREETDRONE STORY_

If you want to understand how StreetDrone came to be, simply visit their office courtyard around the end of June every summer.

The StreetDrone Summer Party has become legendary in the tech industry in the UK. In this little corner of Oxford, you’ll find autonomous vehicles running nonchalantly up and down the road outside the StreetDrone HQ, showing off their very-much-here technology, while inside the courtyard is a treasure trove of workshops, coding spaces, simulation rigs and, of course, the office bar.

Around the office space, you’ll notice an intriguing blend of motorsport paraphernalia, carbon fibre tubs leaning casually against the wall and empty podium champagne bottles standing next to proud championship winners trophies.

But this isn’t quite a racing team – at least not in the traditional sense.

Mike Potts and Mark Preston are the co-founders of StreetDrone. Both have an appetite for adventure and entrepreneurship, starting their lifelong friendship after meeting in Australia as teenagers.

The first time we ever worked together was actually on a paper round when we were in our early teens

Mark Preston

Cycling the streets of Canterbury in Melbourne, the two dreamed of interesting ways to use technology, especially early stage home computers, to have a real impact on the world – from learning how to create 3D graphics on a BBC Micro to building a rudimental solar heating rig for Mark’s parents pool.

DIVERGENCE_

Mike returned to the UK in 1985, and after dropping out at his first attempt at university – in his own often-repeated words, “I would say I’m a failed, wannabe engineer at heart” – his second attempt, at Oxford Brookes University, became the catalyst for his fledgling business career to take off.

At the start of his final year of study he went to Lloyds Bank on Oxford high street, convincing the business manager to loan him £1000, which bought a “very second-hand” van, allowing him to do deliveries and assemblies of flat-pack furniture for the Futon Company, among others. This was a turning point for Mike, proving to himself he could make something from nothing and generate a good profit at the same time, all while completing his university degree.

Meanwhile in Australia, Mark attended the prestigious Monash University and, frustrated at its largely theoretical teachings, decided to additionally gain practical experience in the proven motorsport training ground of Formula Fords with Borland Racing Developments. Designing and manufacturing the successful Spectrum FF1600 machine, Mark also enjoyed spells with General Motors Holden, working with pioneering crash analysis simulations.

But it was his work with Tom Walkinshaw Racing’s Holden Special Vehicles outfit that led him to the UK and into Formula 1. When the organisation bought the Arrows Formula 1 Team, Mark followed to the UK in 1996.

STARS ALLIGNING_

Mike used his skills and experience gained from his delivery business to stand out when he applied for a role with Coca-Cola in 1998, earning the job and the company van that allowed him to regularly see best friend Mark in Oxford, sowing the seeds for StreetDrone’s future.

However, both had industries to transform and companies to lead before reaching autonomous vehicles.

INDIVIDUAL SUCCESSES_

Winning on Track

When Arrows folded in 2002, Mark moved to McLaren and linked up with the famous Adrian Newey, overseeing stress analysis, composite design, materials, and vehicle laboratories.

Then came a greater challenge, joining forces with Aguri Suzuki to create an F1 team in just 100 days, working as the Founder and Technical Director of the new team: the Super Aguri Honda F1 Team. This is now a story infamous among the employees of StreetDrone, told in hushed tones around the campfire. 

While short-lived in F1, it was a partnership that was revived in 2013 when Mark headed up one of the first-ever Formula E Teams, Team Aguri, as one of only 10 founding Team Principals, in leading a motorsport revolution as it embraced e-mobility. 

Mark would leave an incredible impact in Formula E, becoming the most successful Team Principal in the series as it evolved into DS-Techeetah, winning 3 Drivers’ and 2 Teams’ World Championships. 

Speaking to Mark now, he’s incredibly humble about his achievements on-track and is clearly striving for the next level in performance, always. Optimisation is the game and Mark is pretty good at winning.

Transforming the World of Data

Mike would begin working with pioneering technologies, joining the fledgling Expedia in 2000 as just the seventh employee on the books in the UK. 

Heavyweights Microsoft pushed Expedia forward, helping Mike put himself front and centre in the world of e-commerce, not only in the UK, but across Expedia’s fledgling European operations. 

It was the perfect grounding for Mike to launch his second business, and in 2006, Elisa Interactive Group was formed, focussing on data analytics and the optimisation of ecommerce sites across the UK, Spain and Portugal.

After seven years, and clients ranging from Zara to Sky.com, Elisa Interactive was acquired by multinational media agency Havas and Mike became the Chief Data Officer of Havas’s operations in the UK.

CONVERGENCE_

Improving the Lives of People in Cities

Both feeling they needed new challenges, there was the burning desire to be at the vanguard of pioneering technology, and a global event helped them focus on their next move. 

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption, which covered much of Europe in ash clouds and grounded flights, led to Mike spending five days in Oxford with Mark, during which time they dreamed big. 

All day they would analyse global technology companies, before unwinding in the local pub in the evening, laying the groundwork for what would later become their move into the autonomous technology sector. 

In 2015, rising to the challenge of future transportation and mobility in Oxfordshire, Mike and Mark co-founded the MobOx Foundation. They teamed up with Oxford University, Oxford Brookes University, and the Oxfordshire County Council, providing the perfect opportunity for their shared knowledge of data, motorsport, automotive, and business to dovetail. This proved pivotal in the founding of StreetDrone one year later.

StreetDrone is Born

From there, the pair never looked back. In 2016, it was the turn of Oxbotica, an autonomous vehicle software company, who requested that Mike, Mark, and future StreetDrone Technical Director Ian Murphy proposed an autonomous-ready vehicle solution: a robotised Renault Twizy concept was built to be used as an autonomous software test platform for the road by Oxbotica.

While Oxbotica decided to not go with the Oxford based solution, other potential clients saw the genius in using the Twizy. The duo pushed forward, utilising their thick contacts book, they quickly sold their first vehicle to the successful Cambridge startup Wayve.

Mike’s extensive background in marketing, commercial, and entrepreneurship, combined with Mark’s engineering expertise and experience in building high-performance teams, provides a world-class leadership team. With dozens of potential customers and the makings of a growing business, the partners set up shop in 2017 with an office in Oxford to develop their technologies from the ground up.

GROWING_

Feet on the Ground, Shoot for the Stars

Fast forward six years and this growing team (now over 35 people) in Oxford is working to change the world using its autonomous solutions. From grassroots motorsport to the future of autonomous vehicles, Mike and Mark share an insatiable appetite for creating new technologies with real applications – and now it’s paying off.

Speak to Mike about the company he has built and it’s clear – he wants StreetDrone to be the best place in the world to work. 

Just look around at the community from industry that gathers at their Summer Party every year. As the team moves from success to success (with over 30 autonomous vehicles in the wild and recently completing the first autonomous deliveries at Nissan’s car plant in Sunderland), the founders manage to revel in that sweet-spot of startups: growing at a fast pace and retaining a sense of fun, empathy, and excitement for adventure.

From a paper round in Australia, to scaling both digital and four-wheeled worlds of data and motorsport, to transforming the communities of Oxfordshire and now deploying real near-term autonomy, Mike and Mark have built something remarkable together.

https://github.com/streetdrone-home/SD-TwizyModel/blob/master/streetdrone_model/sd_docs/imgs/sd.png

An open letter to Scott Morrison: we need a green new deal. Now

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Reposted after the original letter published Jan 11, 2020, on Medium

Mark Preston has travelled through the world of the Australian automotive industry to Formula 1 and on to Formula E and autonomous vehicles, constantly considering the future of his favourite subject — cars. The race team he leads — DS TECHEETAH Formula E Team — are the current title holders in Formula E and his StreetDrone business presented autonomous vehicles at the CES Technology world fair this week in Las Vegas.

Dear Prime Minister,

I’m an Aussie who grew up only dreaming about V8’s and going fast, but on my recent visit home from the UK for Christmas, I was shocked by the extent of global climate change as I drove to Sydney and back for New Years celebration by the harbour. My shock was matched by the surprise that while the country burns, our government backs yet more coal mining and gives no thought to the manifest alternatives our country has at its fingertips.

As we drove along the Hume Highway stopping at my childhood tourist stops like the Big Koala, Big Merino, Ned Kelly and the Dog on the Tuckerbox, we were blown away by the sheer amount of smoke that was hanging in the 40-degree heat that soaked the countryside. A red/pink sun beat down on the dry land below as we tried to take photos to do justice of this apocalypse.

I hadn’t realised until I did a Google searched for “are these fires as big as previous”, did I find an article on the Guardian Australia website answering those exact questions. I didn’t appreciate while working out of the country that Australia was going to open the world’s biggest coal mine while its own countryside was burning. I do accept that expanding economies like India have the right to also grow, however, we could develop technology around energy supply in parallel, using the earnings from those resources.

A green new deal has been proposed recently, but yet time after time people and government focus on short term gains ignoring the longer term.

Why are we not embracing the competitive advantage that our country enjoys with vast amounts of natural resource and thinking about the endless possibilities that this provides for the future generations?

I moved from gas-guzzling F1 to the new Formula electric (Formula E) race series because it offers a pathway to change how we move & travel as a society. Of course, electric vehicles are only zero emissions at the point of use and can rely on electricity grids powered by carbon. Greening the grid is therefore as important a part of the solution as electric mobility.

But there is hope, especially here in Australia as solar energy is something we have in abundance, as well as many brilliant young engineers who could power our national endeavour to take a global leadership position in clean energy. Our ‘over-supply’ of solar energy has the potential to be converted to hydrogen or ammonia to power new transport solutions and we have at our fingertips the potential to move up the supply chain and be a leading supplier of energy without being the world’s coal mine.

My own story convinces me this ambition is possible. I was born in the Ford town of Geelong and quickly fell in love with the automotive industry. I moved to the UK and joined McLaren Formula 1, and in time, set up my own F1 team, but always had a weather eye on a sustainable future and so I supported the spin-out of an electric motor company from Oxford University and in time, I built my own Formula E team. Today Formula E is in its 6th season, enjoys the commitment of ten carmakers and has changed the world both in racing, but is also having a transformative impact on the development of new personal mobility solutions too.

It is not important to revive the automotive industry in Australia. We have advantages in this country and can focus on these strengths; natural resources must be our focus and amongst these agriculture and energy! But we must also look at autonomous driving systems. I am focusing on the potential future of the mobility business which will be dominated by the concepts of connected, autonomous, shared and electric vehicles, and so should you.

History has shown time and time again that long term thinking provides huge gains economically and socially in the future. In his seminal book on the competitiveness of nations, Michael Porter wrote: “A nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade” and with the current environmental backdrop, we have two compelling reasons to innovate our way out of a crisis.

This occurs when competition is opened up, with governments opening and supporting innovation in industries that play to the strengths of the country with goals like becoming the world leader in off-highway autonomy, long haul hydrogen vehicles, mining trucks and agriculture and solar power delivering sustainable energy carriers using hydrogen and ammonia concepts.

Australia, wake up to the coming changes in global climate change and embrace the competitive advantages that this fine land has given us and let’s get a grand green new tech deal done!

When Racing and Virtual Reality Collide

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Augmented reality has the potential to revolutionise sport, sustainability and transport in megacities. Formula racing is a vibrant, colourful, fast paced sport. Now, something new is set to offer its innovative, immersive motoring experiences to viewers beyond the trackside.

The Oculus Rift is a new virtual reality headset that allows players to step into a game. Or a race. It produces a stereoscopic 3D experience with a huge field of view. The point of this is simple; you don’t see the screen. The technology overcomes resolution and latency problems that have plagued previous virtual reality (VR) headsets, where movement in the game lags behind movement of the head.

“All of us at Oculus Virtual Reality are excited to bring truly immersive VR to people who love video games like we do,” said Palmer Luckey, Founder of Oculus. “Virtual reality has been the long sought after Holy Grail, which most people only ever dreamed of until now. The Oculus Rift is a true game changer that will help make VR the standard for game play in the very near future.”

But I believe that Oculus has potential to deliver more than just immersive gaming and along this avenue my ideas can be how we deal with the lack of engine noise prevalent in current Formula E cars. The phenomenon is something that new F1 engines are struggling with too. VR offers a solution; one that has far reaching implications.

One of the great things with how the season has gone so far is that we have plenty of racing spectacle. Obviously the noise of F1 cars does blow your mind, particularly when you see the race in person, but if you have to rely on the noise to deliver the experience then that’s a problem.

I believe that Formula E can solve this by integrating other experience mechanisms like real time gaming, or VR. Imagine if you could sense enough data from the car and transfer this at the highest rate you can to someone at home and then use that data to truly immerse them in the race. I think that’s the future because ultimately we all want to be more engaged.

The following video shows just what can be done with what we have right now. Although it shows what can be done in American football, it does give you an idea of what can be done in general and apply it to any sport, including formula racing.

I reckon that this is something that can be driven by transferring the experience from the car to the viewer as vividly as possible. If you could feel that experience of driving a Formula E car, possibly through new devices like the Oculus Rift product and the on-car data analysis systems being used in autonomous vehicles, then I think that would really redefine how we experience the sport and make things like sound irrelevant.

And don’t think that car manufacturers are far behind, this is what Jaguar are currently proposing:

Autonomous cars offer tremendous scope for achieving this. They harvest far more data than existing vehicles, and feeding that into the latest VR devices will offer a more absorbing, interactive experience.

My vision hints how Formula E fans across the world could be plugged in to every nuance and twist of a track. Such an experience would have long lasting repercussions in the world of sport, advertising and VR, but could also impact on sustainability now and into the future.

I ran R&D and test teams throughout my F1 career. We were already trying to do data mining back in 1998, but of course the PCs couldn’t handle a lot of the data at that time because they lacked the processing power.

As computing power got bigger we really saw an increase in the level of sensors on the cars. Autonomous vehicles are now sensing an order of magnitude more data in order to feed the artificial intelligence systems that allow them to drive unaided.

Such fast changing technology, where open data and the internet change our world, could solve environmental challenges and offer nifty ways to virtually race. I went off to Silicon Valley five years ago to find out how they were approaching automotive. They were approaching it in a completely different way, with focuses on car-sharing, open-data source journey planners for public and so forth.

My thinking was that if Silicon Valley were going about solving these problems in a particular way, then maybe we were going about it the wrong way. When we started looking at setting up a Formula E team we saw it was relevant for driving innovation of electric powertrains, with applications in electric buses, trains and the traditional road car.

Technology from sport drifts into the mainstream, whether through data led VR or electric road cars. I believe such ideas can lead to true integrated transportation in the megacities of the world. If you put all this together you get a picture of how to solve the whole system.

Transplanting ideas from race track to sustainable city has precedent. When I did my MBA, I learned the effect of ripples through many seemingly disparate markets. There is always cross-pollination of ideas, so long as you’re able to be open minded about similarities.

McLaren’s recent renaming to “McLaren Technology Group” evidences a wider shift among racing companies into sustainability science. This reflects their move into more enterprise focused solutions.

Tomorrow’s world is full of possibilities. Global users might share in a Formula E race via VR, before virtually learning how cars can modify our urban sustainability impacts. Then, they might drive electric vehicles to purchase game consoles, which transmit household energy data back to the web.

Such linked up science need not be an impossible imagining. Indeed, it is limited only by how widely we conceive the future.

Reprinted from Mark Preston’s column Racing to the Future in Motorsport Monday

Winning ways in Buenos Aires

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Wow, what a weekend! Amlin Aguri’s first win in the FIA’s first fully electric championship! It is an amazing feeling to get a result after all the work put in by the team over the last three years.

“Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.”

Plus it takes a lot of work to start a new team in a completely new championship – but it’s worth it when all the effort is rewarded! Many people have asked what we did to get to the front, what has changed, how did we do it?

The build up to the race win really started after all of our troubles in Punta del Este.

The series test, on the Sunday after the Punta race, was the first time that Antonio (Felix de Costa) and Salvador (Duran) really had a chance to test the car after Antonio had missed much of the pre-season testing and the first race in Beijing with BMW DTM duties. This, coupled with the fact that race weekends are so short which restricts running, means that when you haven’t got the car in the “zone” it is extremely difficult to do anything meaningful with regard to setup or finding solutions.

Our race pace has been quick from the beginning with Takuma setting the fastest lap in Beijing. So what we were looking for was time to get a proper qualifying setup and thereby increase our race pace accordingly. You must remember that if we hadn’t had an issue during the pit stop in Malaysia, then Antonio could have finished in the top five and potentially on the podium. The engineers worked over the break between Beijing and Putrajaya and then over Christmas before Punta to get our models and understanding of the car to a point that we could validate this understanding during the Punta test. The result was a fastest first sector on the final run of the day before a Red Flag which showed that we were going in the right direction for the next race in Buenos Aires.

Antonio arrived in BA with a quietly confident attitude focussed on making the best of our great Punta test and determined to have a great weekend: everyone arriving on a high and following through is a good indicator of the picture of the weekend.

So how did the weekend go? Well in Free Practice 1 the car was quick straight of the box. There was good work carried out during the session, getting everything done that was on the plan; another good step. Some cars were running maximum qualifying power; hence the large gap at the front of the pack but P9 was respectable, showing of potential to come.

Then in FP2, it was maximum at- tack, our final preparation before qualifying and we were immediately quick with our final position of P3 only 0.4s off the leader which showed that our ultimate potential for qualifying and race performance was within reach.

Qualifying is always a lottery. Antonio drew Q1 while Salvador was in Q3. The elusive Q4 without red or yellow flags is the name of the game with a rubbered-in track and potentially better track temperatures, but we made the most of the quicker car and got ourselves in the top 10. Antonio felt it was better to aim for a top 10 position and wait to see how things went in the race instead of necessarily going for pole and having a problem. Starting P7, 0.5s from pole position showed again that we were in the right place for the race.

The race was quite chaotic, but Antonio and Salvador drove sensibly, both overtaking a number of drivers and making the best of battles going on around them. As the race went on we had a great pit stop which resulted in gaining positions for Antonio and a safety car which caused some confusion with everyone waiting for the screens to update with the final order to be clear.

As we moved up the leader board it became more and more stressful for everyone in the garage as there was more to lose with each increment Antonio gained! By the time he was in a podium position, the tension was showing on everyone’s faces! And as each problem happened on track we were increasingly on the edge of our seats! Salvador was also making up places and looked like he would get into the points as well.

At that stage we could see that Antonio had plenty of battery life left over and
he was therefore in a great position to push all the way to the end of the race and catch Nick Heidfeld before the chequered flag. When the drive-through came for Nick we almost couldn’t believe it, we just had to hold our breath and bite our nails till the end of the race.

Some people might say that there was some luck involved, but you can bring up many old adages about finishing first that you must first finish, and that goes for every element of the car, our team work, the car setup, the drivers’ management of the car’s batteries, the control systems, our pit stop practice and also how the other teams run their cars. Every part of a team is important and we have proven in previous races that we too could have technical problems such as electronic control systems with Takuma at the first race and pit stop problems that cause issues.

Were we lucky?

Luck is when opportunity meets preparation,and we certainly had the pace to take the opportunities delivered to us over the weekend.

Whats next? Miami, where we should make some improvement on all aspects of the team operation, the car setup, our race strategy and some driver training. We have the pace and now it is a matter of building on success and doing a better job at each race and chipping away at the championship points to move ourselves up the grid. After all we love a challenge; otherwise we wouldn’t have entered such a unique and brand new championship!

Following my last column I have been very interested in the questions that we are being asked in our pre-race press conferences, especially at Buenos Aires where they are big fans of motorsport. One of the most common topics was, ‘how will the technology find its way into the world?’ The best example I could see was the bus rapid transit system they have in the city which is a great example of where electric drive, regenerative systems and wireless charging will find its way quickly into practical everyday applications.

You should remember that Uruguay generates 45% of their electricity from hydro
with a target of 90% in 2015 coming from renewables. The intermittent nature of some renewables will benefit from the “Energy Cloud” that will be created when more electric vehicles connect to the network and allow off line storage in the night for solar and during low wind conditions for wind.

Reprinted from Mark Preston’s column Racing to the Future in Motorsport Monday

Why is the Foxconn announcement so interesting?

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Like many young engineers, I wanted to build my own road car. I began to plan out how much it would cost, where I would buy parts, what would I use as a donor vehicle, how would I manufacture the bodywork and especially and most importantly: what engine would I use?!

I didn’t just want to make just another kit car, it had to be scaleable with my own engine. And that’s where I ran into trouble. If you look at most low volume specialist cars today they use an engine from one of the top OEM’s, for example Lotus uses Toyota engines.

This makes the internal combustion engine an important part of an OEM’s differentiation in the market and a large barrier to entry for new would be manufacturers.  The shear number of requirements for the development of an internal combustion engine today is enormous: €500m would be a good round number to start with in the bank!

But what happens when the internal combustion engine is removed from the equation as with an electric car? Electric motors have existed for over 100 years and they are in almost every common house hold device from a fridges to an air conditioner.  The old barrier to market entry is reduced by a large margin.  The design of a vehicle, although complicated and complex, it is not too dissimilar to designing a modern high end SMART Phone.  It is still difficult, but not an insurmountable challenge and many large companies would be very capable.

This change in the market will allow new entrants and possibly the disruptive change in the automotive industry perhaps to the same level as other industries that are described in great detail in Clayton Christensen’s The Innovators Dilemma.  The recent announcement by Foxconn is an interesting move by one of the world’s largest manufacturers and it could be the start of more movements by Apple, Google and others into one of the oldest markets in the world: transportation.

With the added innovations through driverless capabilities maybe the new entrants change the market as fast as SMART phones did in the mobile market?  Initially we don’t think this is likely just because of the higher capital intensity of a car compared to a phone and the shear number of vehicles that would have to be replaced throughout the world.  But with 80m vehicles being produced every year, it is not unfathomable that new competitors could make a dent in urban markets in the Mega-Cities of the world.

Our belief is that transportation will develop in a trajectory driven by Urbanisation: this is well described in Frost and Sullivan’s Mega-Trends study.   The resultant changes in the industry will move towards mobility becoming a service: i.e. Mobility as a Service.  At this point it is highly possible that vehicles become a set of “devices” on a network integrated by overall mobility integrators: similar to the telecoms integrators such as Vodafone and Telefonica.  These mobility integrators will operate different devices on the network which could be provided by existing and incoming device manufacturers such as Foxconn.

Is this move by Foxconn just the start of something far larger?  We think so and have been working on Integrated Transportation studies with the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University in a Technology Strategy Board sponsored feasibility study in Oxford, UK, called the Oxford Transport Laboratory. click here

The Amlin Aguri Formula E car in China’s Mega-City Beijing

Race to the future

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A year from now, climate negotiators representing countries worldwide will be in Paris. They hope to finalise international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow climate change. Success will depend heavily on economic policy, and the new technologies to usher in a carbon light world.

“Unlike treaties of the past, the Paris agreement needs to speak as loudly of economic transformation as it does of carbon emissions targets,” said Jim Yong Kim, World Bank Group President. The Bank wants new clean technology investments. It wants energy efficiency, performance standards for vehicles and clear economic remit for change.

Motorsport seems an unlikely partner in all this. But the silent technologies being developed in Formula E are ideally placed to put the Bank’s vision on the ground. The Formula, a hotbed for excitement and intrigue, is also a key testing space for sustainable batteries, systems and futurist thinking.

Amlin Aguri racecar driven by Antonio Felix da Costa in Punta del Este, December 2014

“The future I see is for energy companies to become energy carriers,” says Preston. He has 12 years top level motorsport experience with Arrows, McLaren and Super Aguri F1 teams. Electric motors and reimagined transport are central to his vision. It involves carbon-light urban mobility in the cities of tomorrow.

“Fuel, batteries, hydrogen; they are all just carriers of energy. The energy is just stored in a number of different forms. Each has relevance to future transportation and we are working on all within SAFE Racing Technologies, our technology company that support the Amlin Aguri Formula E racing team.”

Finding more reliable energy storage is key. Preston believes legislation is a strong force to help. “If one mega city in China changed its rules to have zero emissions in the city, this could support three new, sustainable electric car companies, all using futurist batteries and storage tech.” he says.

“I think one of the reasons this hasn’t started yet is because the local companies are not quite there with the technology, so the government won’t start until the local companies can support. This is where Formula E comes in.” Motorsports has traditionally driven development in clutches or computer controlled suspension. Now it provides a testbed for advanced EV technologies.

“Once one city does EV successfully, it is possible to start a snowball effect with cities such as Los Angeles perhaps trying again; they tried in the 90s if I recall,” says Preston. In another shift in sustainable thinking, he explains how Formula E is exploring parallels between energy and cloud-based computer systems.

“When software is based in the cloud, individual upgrades in server speeds or software tweaks see all users on the system benefiting immediately,” he begins.

“I think the same could be true of our electrical grid. Today we have coal fired powerstations, but as soon as one of them is upgraded the whole system would be simultaneously. The concept is the ‘Energy Cloud,’ as some people are beginning to call it.

“As more renewables come online, this energy cloud is naturally and automatically upgraded. When more energy carriers connect to the smart grid, and electric cars plug in, the intermittent nature of some renewables is dealt with automatically by the Smart Energy Cloud.”

In this way, cohesive cloud systems could alleviate shortfalls in solar or wind power through scale. “Some more radical ideas could be carbon sequestration at the source of the power generation,” Preston continues.

Returning to the Formula E circuit, he hopes to see static batteries, ready at each race track one month before the race. These would be charged using solar and other renewables, from the smart energy cloud ready for use on race day.

“After the race they would be used for legacy projects; emergency power backup systems for hospital and schools. Cars need only be one part of the modal mix. The design will have longevity. I see Formula E providing a showcase for technology to encourage early adoption of new ideas by making the technology cool and relevant.”

Such Formula E technology might feature in tomorrow’s cars, trains or buses, depending on market dynamics. Preston points out that F1 flywheel technology is finding its way into buses at the moment. “Routes to market can take different paths. Formula E will develop technologies to push overall electrification of the transport industry.”

Widespread takeup for EV may well need direct wireless charging, which Preston discussed at a recent sustainable transport forum in Cologne. “Many bus projects are up and running where a bus will charge at every stop on its journey, effectively giving it limitless range using an electric drivetrain.

“Formula E is developing battery charging, packaging and programming of usage patterns. We are set to  really showcase what a cool and interesting thing electrification of vehicles is.”

Jim Yong Kim believes decarbonising energy sectors over time, while maintaining energy required for development constitutes a challenge no developed country has faced in its history.

“Getting to net zero emissions before 2100 will require a continuing shift in the direction of our energy portfolio, to support energy access for all and increase investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency,” he said.

“It will require continued support for clean transportation and building low-carbon, livable cities, particularly in the fast-growing cities of the developing world, where development today will lock in growth patterns for decades to come.”

Such green transportation may seem light years from the race tracks of Putrajaya or Uruguay. But perhaps, as electric race cars whizz quietly around, the answers are coming.

Formtech launches the E1 research concept EV

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Formtech created a vision of EV when they launched the E1 atFrankfurt’s IAA Motorshow in September.  The research study provides the base for a number of concepts in lightweighting technology using composites, high-end materials and machining.

Formtech’s EV started out as a concept for the companies CEO Franz Hilmer, “I wanted to develop a car that would provide me with a second vehicle that I can use to commute to work, but be stylish and provide the basis to exploit the technologies that Formtech is developing in lightweight materials, high-end precision manufacturing and other technologies.”

Designers: Satoshi Nakamura, Tomas Beres, and Rafael Gross, were given the brief to develop a number of concepts, “The chosen concept of the E1 came from the idea that a secondary car; where the customer already owns a vehicle, and considering an eco-friendly alternative especially designed for short commute, with the capacity to carry 4 passengers, should be simple and take full advantage of the electric drive train. The limited top speed and range will create a lighter, more efficient vehicle, perfect for a second car. The design features a short overhang at both ends to create maximum capacity within the given wheelbase dimension. The side surface wraps around to the front and rear end, creating a sense of security and strength to the overall form. “, said Nakamura.

“The future of EV’s will be based around a number of game changing technologies”, says Mark Preston, ex-F1 designer, “I forsee a change in the way EV’s are perceived with lightweight carbon composites and vehicle dynamics technology such as torque vectoring driving exciting new areas of customer interest.  We created the research study in order to create a platform from which Formtech can develop these new technologies and provide solutions for all areas of EV development”.

The Formtech E1 forms the basis of further development studies by Formtech into the exciting new area of EV’s.  Further studies will be released from Formtech that follow up on the beginnings created with the E1.  “Formtech is committed to working towards the future and welcomes discussions with interested companies and investors from the green sector“, says Hilmer.

First Order Performance Drivers

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What are the drivers performance in motor racing?

Lets start with Newtons Laws of Motion:

  1. In the absence of force, a body either is at rest or moves in a straight line with constant speed.
  2. A body experiencing a force F experiences an acceleration a related to F by F = ma, where m is the mass of the body. Alternatively, force is equal to the time derivative of momentum.
  3. Whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body exerts a force −F on the first body. F and −F are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

How do they relate to motor racing?

F = Force

Force is one of the most important aspects of going fast!  Force comes from a number of areas:

  1. Engine – the force that is transmitted to the wheels to accelerate the mass of the vehicle comes from the torque that is created.
  2. An equal and opposite force is reacted on the vehicle as it goes round a corner which comes from the grip of the tyres on the road.
  3. Downforce coming from the aerodynamics of the vehicle
  4. Drag which is part of aerodynamics resists the car traveling through the air, which relates directly to the first law above
  5. Tyre drag is another force opposing forward motion

Mass, another important one, but most racing series stopped engineers reducing mass beyond a certain level long ago!  Otherwise engineers would have kept going.  So mass used to be a first order performance driver in most racing but was removed as a variable.  Now it is part of the second order drivers of performance, not directly effecting a basic law of physics, but effecting things like dynamics and handling.

Another important law of physics is Coulomb friction: F = mu . N

In motorsports grip is associated with mu.  Mu is proportional to a number of factors such as surface, tyre compound, temperature and load fluctuations just to name a few.  What you will notice is that N is directly proportional to downforce and mu is proportional to the performance of the tyre.

So we find that the three main first order performance drivers in motorsports are (in no particular order):

  • aerodynamics
  • engine
  • tyres (tires)