电动汽车方程式比赛要来了，你会看吗？

    每场比赛一开始，车迷都可以通过社交媒体投票评选他们最喜欢的车手，五名得票最高的车手可以使用10秒钟的60马力急加速。（所有赛车都有额外的急加速动力储备，但只有五名车手有机会用到它。）这个设定可能会让一些年龄较大的车迷觉得不公平。因为赛车比的难道不是驾驶技巧，而是比车手发微博、哄粉丝的功夫？

    不过，至少已经有16名公开支持电动汽车方程式的知名车手（当然，他们并不是全部都参赛了）对这个设定表示了浓厚的兴趣。可能会参加电动汽车方程式的前F1车手卡伦•查德胡克说：“在城市道路而不是封闭赛道上比赛，说明他们努力做出差异化，而不是做成另一个印地赛或F1。”

    赞助商们也看到了这场赛事的潜力。豪雅表、米其林、高通（Qualcomm）、雷诺、DHL等知名企业已经确定赞助本次赛事。尤其是高通将成为第一家赞助这项赛事的大型科技公司。“现在人们已经看到了这辆赛车，我们也带着它参展了，所以其它赞助商也很容易被吸引过来。但是高通是在这一切发生之前就已经做了这件事。”但同时值得注意的是，老牌大型赛事的常客，诸如可口可乐、百事、麦当劳、耐克、阿迪达斯等主流消费品牌都缺席了。

    电动汽车方程式已经把眼光放到第二赛季了，届时，它将向其它厂商开放汽车设计。这一点甚至令潜在的竞争对手都感到兴奋。Andretti Autosport车队的营销总监约翰•洛佩斯说：“在技术研发方面，它将成为各方竞相拓荒的处女地。像对于电池寿命及安全性，以及如何处理火灾，如何处理碰撞这些技术，它都是一个构建这些技术的完美平台。”以前Andretti车队主要参加的是印地赛，这次它也将组队参加电动汽车方程式锦标赛。Andretti车队并没有将这项赛事看成一个竞争对手，而是把它看成一个向车迷提供多样选择的机会。洛佩斯说：“我们非常看好这项赛事。它有没有面对什么重大的挑战？当然。但是我可以告诉你，我们发现赞助商对这次赛事的兴趣比我们参加的任何一次赛事都浓厚。从市场和科技的角度讲，这都是一个印地赛还没有涉足的领域。”

    本次系列赛的共同创办人兼CEO阿甲格曾经是一名欧洲议会的政治家，也在赛车业活跃多年。他自己拥有一支在GP2（比F1低一级的赛事）中参赛的车队。另外他在伦敦开了一家咨询公司，还与印度钢铁巨头拉克希米•米塔尔共同拥有一支英国足球队——女王公园巡游者队。阿甲格正是大家想象中那种神通广大、思维超前，能搞得起这样一个兼顾社交媒体与环保的新型体育赛事的企业家。但是他的成功有一部分也要归功于消费者购买电动汽车的理念。

    有些电动汽车方程式的支持者对这项赛事对电动汽车行业的影响力抱有很高的期望。Causeway公司的执行合伙人兼凯尔特人队的CEO韦克•格罗斯派克说：“如果我们让电动汽车变得更酷，更有吸引力，那么这类车迷就会为电动汽车贡献更高的销量。”Causeway公司的投资收益并不直接依赖电动汽车的销量，但依赖于那些想在赛事里打广告的赞助商，因而它的涨落也将取决于电动汽车市场的健康。

    或许阿甲格本来应该选择特斯拉、而不是雷诺作为赛车的制造厂商。现在，宝马、菲亚特、日产、本田（Honda）等厂商都有自己的全电动车型，他们将来是否会参加电动汽车方程式？如果答案是肯定的，那无疑会提高这次赛事的火爆系数。而这场赛事究竟能不能火，也是这次赛事的最大挑战：尽管已有埃隆•马斯克的珠玉在前，要改变人们认为电动汽车不够“酷”的成见仍然不太容易。

    如果人们对电动汽车的成见依然没有改观，那么对于电动汽车赛事来说，无论背后有多少如饥似渴的品牌和聪明的投资人力挺，也仍然难逃轰然翻车、烧毁殆尽的厄运。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    Fans will have a way to vote for their favorite drivers through social media right up until the start of each race, and the five drivers who get the most votes will be able to use a 10-second, 60-horsepower speed burst whenever they choose. (All cars will have that extra oomph stored, but only five will get to use it.) That may risk turning off older racing aficionados. Shouldn't a race be determined only by racing skill, not by which driver sent out the best tweets?

    But at least 16 famous drivers, who have publicly endorsed Formula E (not the same, yet, as committing to drive in it), are impressed. "Being in city streets instead of circuits, it underlines that they're trying to be different," says Karun Chandhok, a former F1 racer and potential Formula E driver. "They're not trying to be IndyCar or Formula 1."

    Another group that sees potential already: sponsors. Formula E landed Tag Heuer, Michelin, Qualcomm (QCOM), Renault, and DHL. Qualcomm is especially notable as the first big tech company to back it. "Now that they have seen the car and we've brought it around, it's very easy [for other sponsors] to jump on," says Agag, "but Qualcomm did that before anything was there." Notably absent, though, are the mainstream consumer brands that are perennial sponsors of big sports events: Coca-Cola and Pepsi, McDonald's, Nike, and Adidas.

    Formula E is already looking down the road at its second season, when it will open up the car design to other manufacturers. That's exciting even to would-be competitors. John Lopes, CMO of Andretti Autosport, says, "It's the one place that will truly be the Wild West in terms of technical development. Things like battery life and safety and how you deal with fires and what happens in a crash, this is the perfect place to build out that technology." Andretti chiefly competes in IndyCar, but will have a team in Formula E, which it is viewing not as a competitor, but simply a diversification of offerings for fans. "We're really bullish on the series," says Lopes. "Does it have big challenges? Definitely. But I can tell you that we have seen more sponsor interest in this series than any other series we've been involved in. From a market standpoint and a technology standpoint, this is a space IndyCar is not in."

    Agag, the Formula E co-founder and CEO, is a former European Parliament politician and longtime motorsport executive. He owned a team that raced in the GP2 series (a feeder for Formula 1), ran a consultancy in London and co-owned the British soccer team Queens Park Rangers with steel titan Lakshmi Mittal. Agag is just the sort of well-connected, savvy sports exec you'd expect to launch an ambitious new sports series that incorporates green technology and social media. But his success will depend in part on consumer opinions about owning electric cars.

    Some of Formula E's supporters have high hopes that the sport will influence the electric auto market. "If we make electric vehicles seem cooler and more attractive, it may pay off with more electric sales to this category of fans," says Causeway managing partner and Celtics CEO Wyc Grousbeck. Causeway's investment success is not directly dependent on electric car sales, but it will depend on sponsors wanting to advertise with the series, and that will grow and wane along with the health of the electric car market.

    Perhaps Agag should have tapped Tesla (TSLA) as the inaugural manufacturer, not Renault. BMW, Fiat, Nissan, and Honda (HMC) all make an electric model now; might they ever jump in to Formula E? It would certainly help with the cool quotient. And that is the sport's challenge: to shift the narrative that electric cars aren't cool--Elon Musk notwithstanding.

    If attitudes around electric cars can't evolve, then an electric racing series, no matter how many eager brands and smart investors are behind it, might crash and burn.