From 600 kW to 6 MW: How Fortescue Zero plans to take Formula E know-how into mining

Fortescue Zero has been involved in Formula E since its inaugural season as a battery supplier and has also been a technology partner of Jaguar TCS Racing for many years. Formerly known as Williams Advanced Engineering, the company now wants to use the championship even more intensively as a development laboratory with its own Gen4 team. Under the "Track to truck" concept, lessons from batteries, software and fast charging are intended to find their way into Fortescue's huge electric mining vehicles.

The Fortescue Zero name can easily cause some confusion. It is not Australian mining group Fortescue itself that will operate a Formula E team. Fortescue Zero is the group's UK-based technology company and evolved from Williams Advanced Engineering. WAE emerged from the Williams Formula 1 environment and was fully acquired by Fortescue in 2022. Two years later, it was renamed Fortescue Zero.

Its motorsport roots never disappeared. WAE supplied the battery technology for Formula E's first generation of cars and returned as battery supplier for Gen3. Fortescue Zero is also a technology partner of Jaguar. From Season 13, another role will be added: For the first time, the company will not only provide technology but also compete with a team of its own.

Under the "Track to truck" banner, Fortescue wants to transfer lessons from motorsport into heavy industry. Technologies and development approaches from racing are intended to feed into applications for the group's mining operations, among other areas.

Formula E know-how for 240-tonne mining trucks

Fortescue itself illustrates the concept with an unusual comparison: What does a Formula E car have in common with a haul truck capable of carrying up to 240 tonnes?

The operating environments could hardly be more different. While a Formula E car is designed around maximum performance and efficiency over the course of a race, Fortescue's electric mining vehicles have to move enormous loads for hours under extreme conditions.

Yet the fundamental engineering questions are similar. How can energy be used as efficiently as possible? How can very high power be delivered reliably? And how must battery, software and energy-management systems be designed to operate under severe thermal and mechanical loads?

"Track to truck" should therefore not be understood as the direct transfer of individual Formula E components into a mining vehicle. Instead, the focus is on lessons from battery development, charging power, software and energy management.

Fast charging provides one of the clearest examples. In Formula E, Fortescue Zero supplies the Pit Boost system. The mobile chargers operate at 600 kW and add extra energy to the race car in around 30 seconds. In mining, the same basic challenge exists on an entirely different scale.

From 600 kW Pit Boost to a 6 MW charger

Fast-charging systems with outputs of up to 6 MW are being developed for Fortescue's mines. That is ten times the charging power of Formula E's Pit Boost system. The aim is to charge a battery-electric Liebherr T 264 in around 30 minutes. The huge mining truck can carry up to 240 tonnes.

Battery, drivetrain and charging solutions for the vehicle are being developed together with Liebherr, with Fortescue Zero technology and know-how also playing a role.

This is where the distinction within the group becomes particularly clear: Fortescue Zero develops technology, while Fortescue deploys it in its mining operations, among other applications. The mining group therefore also serves as an important user of solutions that Fortescue Zero could eventually offer to other industrial customers.

How Williams know-how is meant to electrify Fortescue's mining operations

The link between motorsport and heavy industry was already a major factor behind Fortescue's acquisition of Williams Advanced Engineering. The deal gave the group extensive expertise in high-performance batteries, electrification and software.

Fortescue Zero's involvement in mining decarbonisation long predates the creation of its own Formula E team. Batteries, charging infrastructure and software solutions for heavy-duty vehicles are already part of its development programme.

The new race team is now intended to provide an additional development environment. Fortescue Zero will be able to gather experience under direct competitive pressure and feed those lessons back into its technology development.

"In racing, every second counts, and innovation can make the difference between winning and losing," Fortescue Growth and Energy CEO Gus Pichot says of the approach. For the company, motorsport is therefore intended to be more than a pursuit of trophies. It is also meant to provide a platform for developing and testing new technologies before deploying them beyond racing.

From technology partner to its own Formula E team

With its own team, Fortescue Zero is expanding a Formula E involvement that stretches back to the Gen1 era. "Progressing from the pit lane to the grid is the next chapter in our motorsports story," says Pichot. "We're here to race, to win and to innovate."

Whether "Track to truck" ultimately works will therefore not be measured by whether components from a Formula E car are installed unchanged in a mining vehicle. The key question is whether motorsport's intense development cycles and extreme demands actually lead to better batteries, chargers and software solutions for Fortescue's industrial applications.

If they do, the familiar motorsport concept of "track to road" would take on a very different form: from track to truck.