Our story
Fast charging is too slow. It is nowhere near the speed of refueling a petrol car. This is the main reason why people are still hesitant to buy or drive an electric car.
InMotion's mission is to make charging as fast and convenient as refueling. Electric Refueling.
No more ‘let’s grab a coffee while your car is charging’ when you don’t feel like it. No more ‘we should stop anyway and rest a bit’. No more waiting around. Just refuel your electric car, in an instance, and be done with it.
The challenge of Electric Refueling is not one that should be underestimated. Technologically, it is a very challenging concept. InMotion will showcase the potential of electric refueling by joining in the Garage 56 class during the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a fully electric endurance race car.
However, it is also important to also remember one’s origins and the past.
After graduating, one of the group members pursued his study at Eindhoven University of Technology. Shortly afterward, InMotion was created by Albert Maas and 9 fellow students, with a dream to create the most innovative racing car in the world. Along came the plan to participate in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the perfect platform to showcase such thrilling technology like fully electric racing.
To see more about our origin story, watch the video! The others parts are on our YouTube channel, in which the full story can be seen.
THE FUSION
After the design of the Vision was made, it became clear that we needed an intermediate step. It was important to obtain knowledge, experience, and a network as not to bite off more than we could chew. Therefore, we first built the Fusion, our first fully electric formula car.
The construction of the Fusion started in the academic year 2014-2015. The chassis was being designed and created to, eventually, be unveiled in October 2015. During that period, we contacted a substantial number of partners; we received 3D printed titanium components for the car, and the ECU development with ICT had begun. In October 2015 we unveiled the Fusion to the public, but there was still a lot of work before the car you know it as today was complete.
After the powertrain and low voltage systems were finished n January 2017, it was finally time to show our next achievement: a driving Fusion! This happened during our 2017 partner event were Nick Catsburg was our driver. We were all very delighted with the result. At that moment, we could hardly imagine what would happen next.
On June the 4th 2017, only four months after the first drive, we broke the electric lap record on Circuit Zandvoort! Beating our colleagues from Delft by a stunning 16 seconds! Beitkse Visser, our record driver, set the new record at 1:48:371.
Barely two months later, on July the 15th, we surprised the world again by breaking another electric lap record! This time, our driver Xavier Maassen set the new record at 1:42:641 on Circuit Zolder. We were no less than 19 seconds faster than the previous holder!
On July the 21st 2018, one year later, we got another record in our pocket! This time, we set the electric lap record at TT Circuit Assen. With an incredible time of 1:43:059, it will be tough for future electric cars to beat. For this record, we had a new driver: Jeroen Mul.
THE VISION
After the completion and success of the Fusion, there were opportunities, with our new experience and knowledge, to return to the original goal. With an expanded team of over fifty members, the concept car (Vision) could be developed. In early 2018, work began to create the Vision, the visualization of the original design Albert Maas had designed over 5 years ago. The design had been kept secret until the end of September 2018. That's when we revealed our Vision. Together with a new corporate identity and a new purpose, we were ready to take on all the challenges ahead. Fast charging an endurance race car.
After building the Vision, we were ready for our first fast charging iteration endurance race car. In 2019, we started the two-year design phase of the Revolution. Everything in this design had to be right and work well together, because this is the fast charging endurance race car we envisioned. During the design process, we chose to use a standard Ginetta LMP3 chassis, so we could really focus on the technology of Electric Refueling. This two-year design phase was followed by another year of assembly, after which we could finally reveal the Revolution to the outside world in 2021. The Revolution's first milestone is an incredibly quick fast charging time; within 12 minutes the race car is charged from 20% to 80% SoC. But we're not there yet, it needs to be even faster.
Our goal is to solve the last obstacle that keeps people from using an electric car: the charging time. We want to reduce the charging time to the same length of time it takes to fill up a traditional fuel car. We are going to demonstrate our technology at the 24h of Le Mans, competing in the Garage 56 class with an all-electric race car. Till this day, InMotion is still developing Electric Refueling further.
