Okay, so motorsports have always been considered an innovator in automobile development. Disc brakes, seatbelts, headlights, and anti-lock braking all come from motorsports, and thus the claim put forward by car manufacturers “motorsports innovations make regular driving safer/better” has merit.

In FE, the cars have regulations saying what parts can be modified and improved, and what can’t. One of those things that can’t be modified on the racecars are the batteries (and powertrains). So no smaller batteries, or more powerful batteries, or different battery casing, or different material components. Every car on the track has been using the same type of 600kw lithium batteries since the beginning of Gen-3 cars.

Manufacturers want to use motorsports as a test bed for trying out new parts and ideas too expensive or risky to put into a production car, so the FIA choosing to block manufacturers from making more efficient batteries for FE means that there’s no real innovation going on, despite FE writing the word “innovation” on tons of articles and promotional material.