EXTREME E.

CUPRA announces its participation in Extreme E: The race against time.

Electrification and performance have always been at the core of CUPRA with the brand’s continual presence in Formula E since its inception and the development of the first-ever electric touring racing car, the CUPRA e-Racer. Today, CUPRA’s vision of fully electric mobility counts more than ever, as the brand plans to join a race that we can all get behind.

Taking advantage of the inauguration of its first CUPRA Garage in Europe in the German city of Hamburg, CUPRA announced its participation in the Extreme E racing series, pairing up with ABT Sportsline as the racing team’s main partner and will contribute to lining up a team of engineers and drivers for this electric odyssey.

What is Extreme E?

Developed by the founder of Formula E, Alejandro Agag, Extreme E is a racing event that aims to reinvent motorsport. By bringing electric racing to some of the most remote corners of the planet, spanning four continents featuring Arctic, desert, rainforest, glacier and ocean locations, it aims to highlight the climate change challenges faced by different ecosystems, while showcasing the performance of all-electric SUVs in extreme conditions.

Lightweight electric off-road racers will compete in a series of contests that will take the form of qualifying, semi-final and final sprints, staged on a two-lap run over a 5-mile, off-road track. As a show of support to gender equality in both motorsport and the workplace, teams will be made up of one male and one female driver, with a mid-race switch upon completion of the first lap. CUPRA ambassador Mattias Ekström has already been confirmed as the male driver with the female driver expected to be announced soon.

The goal of Extreme E is to promote sustainability and the adoption of electric vehicles to help protect the planet, a vision CUPRA also believes in. That said, Extreme E will be overseen by an expert independent panel of scientists from Cambridge and Oxford universities. Additionally, the event’s organisers have proposed that the entire operation will be transported on a specially-converted Royal Mail cargo ship that will double up as a mobile environmental research laboratory, taking flying and its heavy carbon footprint out of the equation and bolstering the approach to ecological sustainability to further reduce the environmental impact associated with global transportation.

CUPRA e-racing academy

During the press talk between CUPRA, ABT and Extreme E’s senior executives, CUPRA CEO Wayne Griffiths also announced that CUPRA is working on the creation of the world’s first electric racing academy. With this new project, which highlights the brand’s pioneering role in the world of motorsport, CUPRA will be contributing to the development of electric racing by training the new generation of race drivers. The brand will take advantage of its in-house development of the first-ever electric touring racing car, the CUPRA e-Racer, for the rollout of the new academy.

Now more than ever we are all racing against the clock for a better future. And it’s the one race we can only win together.