Season 8 of the RCCO World eX Championship kicks off on 4th March with an eX Prix at Watkins Glen. It will be the first official championship race for the updated eX ZERO.
Nicknamed the ‘sustainable beast’, the stunning all-electric, all-wheel-drive prototype was originally unveiled at the 2020 IFA in Berlin during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2021, the super-fast electric sportscar has been delivering plenty of electrifying races, breaking track records across the virtual racing world.
With the experience of more than 100 races over the last four years, the World eX community has developed an improved version of the prototype. Drivability was key for the development team, led by two-time World eX Champion Devin Braune, a game developer at Studio 397 who spent a lot of private time to improve the car.
The 2025 eX ZERO Evo features updated aerodynamics and a state-of-the-art ABS system. The car may look the same as its predecessor, but it is a giant leap forward in terms of drivability.
With up to 1,000hp and ultra-high speeds, the eX ZERO was always going to be difficult to tame – especially for non-professional sim racers, the core target of World eX. By improving airflow and reducing the ‘dirty air’ effect, racing has been improved. The newly developed ABS system provides much more consistent braking performance compared to the original in-game ABS assist.
To suit different driving styles, drivers can now even choose from 12 different ABS modes, in addition to adjusting brake balance and regen mapping.
The new anti-lock braking system is a four-sensor, four-channel system, which means that each wheel operates independently, and if necessary, only one wheel will modulate its brake to prevent locking. This produces the characteristic shudder in the driver’s steering wheel as the other wheels continue to brake.
Unlike most other cars, which simply have ABS values from 0-11 (example), where 0 is off and 11 is a very low activation threshold, the new eX ZERO Evo comes with ABS maps. This means that the driver has maps from 0-12, divided into four categories: ‘Off’, ‘Understeer’, ‘Neutral’, ‘Oversteer’. Each category (except for ‘Off’) has four different settings. The lowest allows the tire to slip the most, which can be beneficial but tends to have the most brutal and unpredictable effect, while the highest allows very little slip, so it engages as soon as any wheel comes close to locking and can even be active for what seems like normal braking.
“The categories ‘Understeer’ and ‘Oversteer’ will allow more slip on the front or rear respectively,” explains Devin Braune. “Leading to the described characteristics while ABS is engaged. While lower settings will allow for more slip in general, they also increase the threshold split, and therefore the described effect. Meaning ‘Understeer 1’ is much more understeery than ‘Understeer 4’ when ABS starts engaging. By default, setups will use ‘Neutral 3’ or ‘Neutral 4’, which should be the easiest and generally best settings for most conditions and driving styles.”
“I just want to give a huge shoutout to Devin,” says World eX community member Steffen Walter who helped with the development. “The updates are fantastic – the car feels much more predictable and fun to drive. The feedback from test drivers has been super positive, so everything is set for an amazing 2025 World eX season!”
The eX ZERO Evo is currently available exclusively to World eX Championship competitors and members of the unique sim racing community via the rFactor 2 Steam Workshop.
