Acciona, Carlos Sainz and QEV Technologies will compete together in Extreme E, the new sustainable off-road world championship for SUV vehicles. The team named ‘Acciona | Sainz XE’ will include Sainz himself and Laia Sanz as drivers.
Extreme E, officially certified by the International Automobile Federation (FIA), is a new global competition that integrates, for the first time in motorsport, the concepts of climate mitigation, sustainable mobility and gender equality.
QEV Technologies, a company specialized in R&D in electric mobility and with vast experience in competitive motorsport, will be the team’s technical partner.
Carlos Sainz has won the World Rally Championship twice, in 1990 and 1992. He has also won the Dakar Rally three times: in 2010, 2018 and, most recently, this year. The Spanish driver has been awarded the Princess of Asturias Sports Award 2020 for his successful career in the elite of world motorsport.
Laia Sanz has been the Trial World Champion thirteen times and the Enduro World Champion on five occasions. She has finished the Dakar Rally ten times, between 2011 and 2020, winning in the women’s motorcycle category in all of them. She also finished 9th overall in 2015, achieving the best result ever by a woman in the motorcycle category of the Dakar Rally. Her participation in the new Extreme E team represents her official move from motorcycling to sports car racing.
Acciona, which in 2017 led the first team to complete the Dakar Rally with a 100% electric vehicle, returns to motorsport with the aim of contributing to global awareness on the effects of climate change and the need to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
The Acciona | Sainz XE Team will compete against eight top racing teams which will showcase the reliability of electric mobility and just how competitive renewable energies can be when put to the test in the most demanding environments.
Extreme E Season 1 is committed to being a competition with a net positive impact on CO2 emissions: it will reduce and offset more greenhouse gases than it emits into the atmosphere. To achieve this goal, all teams will use the same vehicle model, the Odyssey 21. The 100% electric off-road car, whose batteries will be charged by green hydrogen systems, has a 400kW engine (the equivalent of 557cv), weighing 1,650Kg and measuring 2.3 metres wide. The Odyssey 21 can go from 0 to 100Km/h in 4.5 seconds and can tackle slopes of up to 53º (130%).
Each of the five rounds that will be held over the next year will serve to show the impact of climate change on different threatened ecosystems around the world.
The competition will begin on 20 March 2021 with the Desert X Prix, in Al-‘Ula, Saudi Arabia, which is known for its arid and rocky terrain: an example of the devastating desertification and drought the planet is facing.
It will be followed by the Ocean X Prix in Senegal (29-30 May), the Arctic X Prix in Greenland (28-29 August), the Amazon X Prix in Brazil (23-24 October), and the Glacier X Prix in Argentina (11-12 December).
Each route will have an approximate distance of 16-20 kilometres, divided into two laps, which will encourage high speeds and wheel to wheel racing. Each X Prix will be held over two days, with a first qualifying round, two semi-finals and the grand finale.
Gender equality is another key aspect of Extreme E. The regulations establish that the teams must be composed of 50% men and 50% women, with the same number of kilometres travelled by each of the drivers at the wheel of their Odyssey 21 electric SUV.