Extreme E hopes to raise awareness of climate crisis through motorsport

Extreme E has an ambition to reinvent motorsport with it’s outlandish electric SUV off road racing series. It’s a concept like no other motorsport championship and this seemingly impossible dream has been made into a reality by Alejandro Agag, the founder of Formula E. The five locations are based on different environments – ocean, desert, arctic, rainforest and glacier with the objective of using motorsport as an instrument to highlight the damage to some of the most vulnerable ecosystems on our planet. 

In an exclusive interview with SPOGO, series founder Alejandro Agag talks about how it all began, the social aspirations of Extreme E, the challenges faced in making it a reality and the goal to raise awareness to help save our planet. 

alejandro-1-1 Extreme E hopes to raise awareness of climate crisis through motorsport

As founder and CEO of Extreme E, how did the idea formulate and what was the process that led to the idea becoming a reality?

Following the success of Formula E, I wanted to take our electric mission one step further and highlight the climate emergency – one of the biggest challenges the world is facing – through an exciting new motorsport.

Extreme E takes electric SUVs to some of the most remote corners of the planet to show damage to the environment and inspire change, by showcasing less carbon intensive ways of living. Through the Legacy Programmes at each race location, we will leave a long-lasting positive impact on the areas we visit and it has taken a lot of hard work securing locations, teams, drivers, partners and scientists.

The goal of Extreme E from a social standpoint is to highlight the effects of climate change and endangered habitats using motorsports. How do you plan to do that?

We hope to highlight the effects of climate change through the power of sport, after all 24 out of 25 of the most watched TV broadcasts ever have been about sport. As we won’t have spectators on-site our broadcast product is one of the main ways we speak to our audience, so we are creating a very innovative product in terms of the racing including graphics and overlays, but also a magazine show which tells the stories of the locations and the issues faced, plus the people involved.

How different is Extreme E compared to other motorsport events?

In some ways very similar, we will have exciting racing, but in other ways very different, as we are using motorsport to highlight the climate emergency. 

We have a couple of world-firsts in the motorsport world including the stipulation teams must field both a male and female driver in a bid for gender equality. We will also be using a hydrogen fuel cell to charge our electric SUVs emissions free, so in that sense we are very forward thinking.

From a sustainability point of view we aim to be net carbon zero by the end of our first race and we are doing everything we can to make that happen, from keeping the championship’s carbon footprint as low as possible in its operations, for example, using a ship, the St. Helena, instead of air freight, right through to trophy creation – these will be made from recycled plastic.

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What are the challenges you have faced in making Extreme E a reality?

There have been a few challenges like any start-up, but I would say we are in pretty good shape, we have incredible teams, drivers and a host of global broadcasters so despite the challenges things have really moved forward.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your plans?

It has made everything harder due to the travel restrictions, we haven’t been able to complete as many site visits as we would have liked, but all in all, COVID really hasn’t stopped us. In 2020, we were in the preparation phase in terms of signing teams and partners and we were lucky that we could really carry on during COVID.

How do you plan to generate interest in Extreme E and gain acceptance from the motorsport fans especially considering that no fans will be allowed to be at race venues?

Already we feel like there is a massive amount of excitement from motorsport fans about Extreme E, you just have to look at our social media. Not having spectators on-site was always our plan, so it is through our engaging broadcast product that we will reach fans.

Tell us more about the virtual hospitality packages available for each race? 

Virtual hospitality is incredibly interesting, it’s a great concept that the team came up with and I think to bring great hospitality to people’s homes you need to offer premium access and the opportunity to be able to see behind the scenes as well as tailored content specifically for them so they feel they are one step closer to the event than everyone else watching on TV. You can send merchandise to the homes and even a chef to prepare special food, and one of the brands associated with us could take them for a spin in an electric car around their homes or in their city. There are many things you can think of with virtual hospitality, and we are very excited about it.

What impact do you hope to create from the inaugural season of Extreme E? 

I hope we will raise awareness of the climate crisis, but go beyond that and encourage people to take action, big or small, to reduce their carbon footprint to help save our planet.

In our specific race locations, we will leave a long-lasting positive impact through our Legacy Programmes which include planting one million mangroves in Senegal, empowering young climate changemakers in partnership with UNICEF in Greenland and reforesting 100 hectares of the Amazon rainforest.

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