Meet Pininfarina's Formula E cars of the future

Hear the name Pininfarina, and you’ll probably be reminded of classic Ferraris from eras long gone by.

And while the Italian design house has often conceived plenty of other things that are a far cry from, say, a bright red Testarossa, it's probably never done anything quite like this before...

Together with Formula E team Mahindra Racing, Pininfarina has drawn up three potential chassis to be used in the electric racing series from 2018 onwards. From the start of its fifth season, all Formula E teams will use the same chassis to in order to keep costs down.

And while all the cars on the grid will look pretty much identical, the races will be decided by powertrains and software developed by each entrant.

Mahindra Racing currently lies fifth in the standings halfway through the current season, but with this project, is aiming to provoke a debate about which direction the sport should take in the coming years.

As such, fans have been invited to share their own designs on social media using the hashtag #FormulaEConcepts.

“The idea was that Formula E is looking for the next thing, can we do something just to stimulate the debate?” asks Chief Creative Officer Fabio Filippini. “I had three designers and told them to just freely design something that could be a vision, a more stylish and exciting vision of Formula E, without doing things too far away. Don’t do science fiction sketches!"

“It’s just to stimulate debate,” he continues. “Exercising our creativity on these sketches allowed us to imagine the evolution of this formula. A possible contribution of Pininfarina to the future development of a Formula E car would be a highly motivating challenge, fully consistent with our mission of creators and innovators in the automotive field.”

Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra is also enthusiastic about the plans, and is confident that it will help bring the company's ‘Future of Mobility’ project into fruition.

“While these innovative designs are a creative project at this stage, I would be thrilled to see the M5Electro look like this,” she said in a statement.

Based on recent evidence, the future of motorsport could look pretty darn impressive one day.

Like the look of these Pininfarina sketches?