Andretti Autosport have had a respectable first season in Formula E this year, but the Indianapolis outfit left London disappointed as the team failed to pick up a single victory throughout the 11 races.

The American team have been successful in every category they have entered and they thought Formula E would be no exception. Therefore, finishing the season with three pole positions but being unable to put those great qualifying performances into race wins, has raised questions marks within the team about why they have not been able to convert their pace into victories.

The Andretti team name has secured four Indy Car Series championships, two Indy Lights championships, they have won the Pro Mazda championship, as well as winning the USF2000 championship and what the team brag about the most is their three Indy 500 victories.

Therefore, this is why the team feel disappointed in finishing the season in fifth in the team championship. The ever mighty Michael Andretti who runs the team has installed the winning mentality into all of his teams and you can see the disappointment on the engineers and mechanics faces when they don’t achieve it.

However, as Andretti’s Formula E team has yet to win a race, and his team are set to bring their own powertrain to next season’s car, the former Mclaren F1 driver has called upon large technological companies to help bring the team to winning ways.

Houston Mechatronics Inc (HMI) and TE Connectivity have partnered with Andretti Technologies to develop an advanced electric powertrain to propel Andretti’s Formula E race car to the front of the grid next season.

Houston Mechatronics began working with Andretti Technologies in October of last year. They have been testing the powertrain in the factory for many months with mixed results. However, the company from Texas where happy that they received some negative and some positive data from the powertrain early, as it has given them time to analyse the data and fix the issues before they put the package in the car for the first time.

Recently, the motor and the supporting power control electronics successfully completed the initial FIA inspection at Donington Park last week.

The team are extremely looking forward to the pre-season tests now that they have passed the initial inspection by the FIA, as Houston Mechatronics have used an innovative evolutionary computing design technique derived from NASA-supported technology to develop the new electric motor currently undergoing testing at Andretti Motorsports and HMI’s Texas facility.

The main aim of this powertrain is to make sure it is as efficient as possible, so it does not waste too much battery life when the motor is running at 170kW next season. This is the key element for Formula E in the second season. This is because the more efficient the powertrain, the longer teams can run at 170kW without putting to much strain on the battery life.

This is important because the range of the battery will be identical to the range it had last season. Therefore, by putting more power through the battery, the battery will drain its energy much faster unless teams find a way to reduce the amount of energy being wasted.

Nicolaus Radford, co-founder and CTO of HMI, who spoke to Formula E Zone in London is confident that his team along with the Andretti Technologies team have found a way of making the car as efficient as possible.

“We have been working with Andretti Technologies for a long time now on this project. The key has been finding the efficiency in the powertrain to make it extremely competitive next season.”

“The development program has been fairly mixed, but we have been working on the systems since around about October, so we have had time to fix the bugs that we found in the system so they are ready to be road tested in a couple of weeks,” said Nicolaus Radford.

Radford was also delighted to have the opportunity to work on something so ground-breaking as Formula E, and he is hopeful that their hard work can lead to better electric vehicles in the future.

“We are passionate about bringing our expertise to bear on relevant societal challenges. We see our partnership with Andretti Technologies within Formula E racing as an exciting opportunity to directly contribute to the advancement of electric vehicles for the future,” said Radford.