Ellis Spiezia tells us about being the world’s first native electric racing driver and how he’s leading a new generation that will redefine education, the economy, and a more sustainable future
We were hunting for inspirational quotes as a way to introduce Ellis Spiezia. Something, considering his reputation and ambition, suitably pioneering, fearless, and about the importance of being first. Or, to use the language of his beloved motorsport: choosing a path, sticking your foot down, and not stopping until you get there. Ayrton Senna – of course –came to mind with his famous ‘being second is to be the first of the ones who lose’. But sometimes, you just have to keep it simple. Which is why we stopped hunting, and let the man himself sum it up: “I truly believe that the rewards of being first far outweigh the risks”. See. Perfect.
In this instance, the rewards go beyond just winning races (although Spiezia has an uncanny knack for doing just that). Today, we’ve joined him to talk about advancing electric mobility, how he is paving a new path in a legacy sport, using his platform to redefine education and champion sustainability, and inspiring the next generation to embrace positive action.
At just 18, Spiezia is the world’s first native electric racing driver. Starting his career in indoor karting and sim racing he and his family, who together run and manage his Ellysium Racing team, bucked the traditional karting to racing route (where most drivers want to end up in the gas-guzzling, internal combustion-engined Formula 1) to take the unproven path, driven by a belief that electric is the future for performance and the planet.
““WE’RE ESSENTIALLY RACING TO STRESS TEST WHAT’S GOING TO BE AT THE HEART OF WHAT PEOPLE ARE DRIVING EVERY DAY IN THE FUTURE”
“I REMEMBER USING MY BIRTHDAY MONEY TO PUT US ON THE PREORDER LIST FOR A CYBERTRUCK, OR GOING TO THE FORMULA E RACES IN BROOKLYN BECAUSE THEY WERE JUST A FERRY RIDE AWAY”
Along the way they’ve helped grow a nascent industry, embraced cutting-edge technology, competed in four electric kart series, participated in testing and development for new electric race cars, raced in junior electric car championships and – when there’s time to come up for breath – turned Ellysium from a personal brand to a tech-driven education and training movement. Spiezia calls it ‘building the bridge as you’re crossing it’ and, perhaps unsurprisingly for someone known as the Electric Renegade, it all started with a leap of faith and a one-way ticket to electric karting in Europe.
ELECTRIC RACING PIONEER
“I got my ass kicked. But we’re still here, so I must have done something right,” laughs Spiezia, recalling his first race in the DEKM, a German electric kart championship that gives young drivers an alternative route and promotes electric mobility and zero-emission transport. He and his family had arrived in Europe in 2020 (originally planning to visit for just three months, they are still there) after reaching a crossroads. Having proved his ability in rental karting in the US, the choice was to buy a combustion kart and club race for as long as they could afford to keep it up, or go for something completely different.
“We had no bias,” says Spiezia. “We didn’t know what the path was supposed to be so, when my mom said ‘you raced indoor electric karts, I wonder if they do it outdoors at a higher level of competition’ it was completely normal, the goal was getting a platform and to keep pushing forward. It was the middle of COVID, we gave up our home, sold the car, and headed to Europe. The electric karting series in Germany was arrive and drive – you brought your helmet, a race suit and someone to be your mechanic and coach and went for it. Against some of the best drivers in one of the most prestigious motorsport countries.”
Spiezia has followed the electric racing route ever since, developing both his skills behind the wheel of numerous cars and race series, and his position as an advocate for getting young people into the electric ecosystem. In 2021 he raced in four electric kart series driving, he says, “nearly every single electric kart on the planet” in the process.
In 2022 and 2023, Spiezia moved to developing, testing and racing electric cars in the Electric Racing Academy (ERA) Championship for open wheel, all-electric formula racing cars, where he was the first pole sitter with a gap of one and half seconds, and NXT Gen Cup, the world’s first 100% electric junior touring car series.
Both championships are as much about promoting the potential of an electric future, raising awareness about sustainability, and inspiring the next generation as they are about racing. ERA Championship, for
example, uses sustainable sources of energy to charge its fully electric cars, has no air freighting or intercontinental travel within a season to minimise logistics impact, explores alternative and more sustainable materials for its cars, and addresses waste through ensuring a plastic-free paddock and minimising tyre and brake usage. The NXT Gen Cup is focused on making electric the biggest revolution in automotive history and ensuring that young people are at the heart of change; drivers as young as 14 can enter, racing fully electric touring cars based on a Mini Cooper.
ON THE PODIUM AT SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS
“I TRULY BELIEVE THAT THE REWARDS OF BEING FIRST FAR OUTWEIGH THE RISKS”
AT THE FORD FIESTA SPRINT CUP AWARDS IN 2022
FIRST EVER WIN IN CARS IN THE NXT GEN CHAMPIONSHIP
“I’M NOT GOING TO LIST THE WAYS IN WHICH THE WORLD IS BURNING. INSTEAD, I WANT TO INSPIRE AND BE A PART OF POSITIVE ACTION”
“Both are completely opposite driving experiences, despite the way they’re both pushing towards the same goals,” says Spiezia. “They’re fantastic for demonstrating the potential that’s there with electric motorsport. In the NXT Gen Cup, for example, we were the only 20 drivers racing in an electric touring car championship like this, there was nothing else on the planet like it last year and that’s huge in terms of visibility for electric mobility. But we were also doing amazing things in karting around sustainability too like charging the entire fleet of karts from the local solar grid when we turned up to race; that grassroots field is where so much of the growth happens.”
DEVELOPING FUTURE MOBILITY
Spiezia points to the importance of this kind of ambition, and electric motorsport more broadly, as a proving ground for technologies that will likely end up in tomorrow’s road cars. A self-confessed tinkerer with a life-long obsession with anything on wheels, his interest has grown alongside his commitment to the sport. “I can remember even before we were in electric motorsport, things like using my birthday money to put us on the preorder list for a Tesla Cybertruck,” he says, “or going to the Formula E races in Brooklyn because they were just a ferry ride away. That was in the early days of electric motorsport, when Formula E was in its first generation and cars were being swapped mid-race because batteries wouldn’t last. The advances that have been made since are huge.
“It was around 2019 when I began taking electric indoor karting more seriously that we started doing our research, and you could see there were things growing and developing,” Spiezia continues. “Technology-wise, being able to develop the ERA car as a test and development driver was really cool. Everything is fun at the top level, when you can spend what you want on batteries, motors, and tech, but on a rainy day in Belgium when you’re working hard on software and hardware and part of a team that’s innovating to bring the most change at a super-fast rate, that’s when it’s pretty inspiring.
“Seeing firsthand how that side of the technology grows, then trickles down into road cars is awesome – we’re essentially racing to stress test what’s going to be at the heart of what people are driving every day in the future,” he says. “If you look at disc brakes, aerodynamics, active suspension, it’s all important for safety and comfort on the road, and it was all pioneered in racing. With electric cars, I think how we use software and the
way it interacts with other components will be crucial for efficiency in future electric mobility solutions. In a race, changing a few values on a computer gets us another 10% of range out on track – when you’re not driving flat out and cruising on the highway, those kinds of gains will be enormous.”
TRAINING, TEACHING, INSPIRING
Spiezia also puts his passion for racing to good use off the track. He and Ellysium Racing are focused on using their own experiences to leverage the excitement of the rapidly growing electric motorsport sector to inspire more young people to innovate, think, and create. His pioneering spirit was recognised in 2022 when he was one of only five athletes in the world to be nominated for the first ever BBC Green Sports Young Athlete of the Year Award, given to a sportsperson aged 25 and under who is either professional or on a pathway to elite sport and has proactively demonstrated support for environmental and/or climate change issues.
“WE WERE ALSO DOING AMAZING THINGS IN KARTING IN TERMS OF SUSTAINABILITY TOO LIKE CHARGING THE ENTIRE FLEET OF KARTS FROM THE LOCAL SOLAR GRID WHEN WE TURNED UP TO RACE”
“It’s really important, both to show young people that there’s more than one route into what they want to do, and teach them about electric mobility and things like sustainability,” Spiezia says of working with younger drivers. “From a pure driving perspective, the first steps in a career are the most defining, so it’s crucial that there are junior routes into electric sport and that we’re highlighting them as much as possible. That’s especially true for younger kids who don’t have any bias yet, who have started out on sim racing or don’t care about things like what noise the kart makes. We want to get people into the electric ecosystem and onto this giant, growing stage as early as possible.”
Ellysium Racing does that via several methods. Over the course of Spiezia’s career it has developed from his own race team/personal brand to maximise his racing opportunities, to a fully-fledged movement that provides education including around STEM subjects, driver coaching, training, and development, and a community with transparency, positivity and a mission towards sustainability. In typically innovative fashion, it delivers this using the latest technologies including the metaverse, web3, and blockchain-enabled carbon audit and compensation tools.
“It’s a funny one,” he says, “because we always say you don’t get into motorsport to save the planet. It’s probably the last on peoples’ lists in terms of sustainability and being more conscious of the environment, but we actually have an amazing platform where people are paying attention to the racing and the cars, and we’re able
“IT’S FANTASTIC FOR DEMONSTRATING THE POTENTIAL THAT’S THERE WITH ELECTRIC MOTORSPORT”
to push the important messaging about sustainability because of that. My view has always been that I’m not going to list the ways in which the world is burning. Instead, I want to inspire and be a part of positive action. Motorsport is a great way to do that – we can bring the younger generations in with the fast cars, the on-track action and excitement, and through that they’re actually learning all about what we’re doing in terms of the bigger picture.”
Ellyisum works with several partner organisations to help amplify this messaging as much as possible including EcoAthletes Champion, which works to turn the sporting sector into a force for good by connecting professional athletes with charities to give collective voice to global education and action. “It’s really about expanding our reach as much as possible and finding others doing the same thing,” says Spiezia of the partnership. “For example, it’s really great in helping us understand areas we’re supporting, whether it’s working with certain charities impacting climate change or even developing work around the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We’re all about sharing platforms to inspire people.”
As well as driver coaching and training, where Spiezia has been working with young people stepping into karting, Ellysium offers dedicated learning and education opportunities including custom curriculum content on topics like sustainability, climate, STEM, entrepreneurship, hands-on workshops and projects, after school programmes, and speaking engagements.
“I can’t imagine doing anything else, so I’m glad I can use my passion to educate and inspire other people about sustainability,” Spiezia says. “It’s something I really enjoy and we’re definitely seeing interest and engagement from young people on these kinds of subjects. You have to package it the right way, though. We can throw a million graphs and statistics at kids, but we want to make it as engaging and interactive as possible. The metaverse is great for that because it brings people together and creates a community,
but we have such a powerful set of tools with the electric race cars that we can get the really important information out there in a unique way that no one else is doing.
“To give an example, I’ve a huge fleet of radio controlled (RC) cars and we’ve recently been partnering with the KidKong Association, which provides urban youth initiatives, to offer a programme that encourages young people into the electric vehicle field,” he continues. “It’s a projectbased STEM learning programme that teaches them to engineer, create, and problem solve using RC cars, which are basically electric cars in miniature.”
“I CAN’T IMAGINE DOING ANYTHING ELSE, SO I’M GLAD I CAN USE MY PASSION TO EDUCATE AND INSPIRE OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT
Spiezia and Ellysium are proof that there’s great opportunity in taking the unorthodox approach to life. His choice to enter electric racing has proven successful, both in terms of podiums and having a platform to engage and inspire others on some of the very real challenges we face.