Last year, I wanted to join a student team to get more out of my life as a student and interact with the industry. I looked through all available student teams at the Eindhoven University of Technology and InMotion was the one that caught my eye. InMotion is a student team that focuses on the problem of fast-charging: Fast-Charging is too slow. The goal is to make fast-charging eventually as fast as a conventional petrol car can be refueled and this will be called Electric Refueling.

The Revolution

After the team finished the build of the previous car, the Vision, they began the development of the first fast charging iteration of an endurance race car. Why an endurance race car you might ask? The ideal platform to show Electric Refueling is the 24h of Le Mans. Everything in the car should work together better than we have ever developed, since fast-charging is no easy task. During the design process, the choice to use and modify a Ginetta LMP3 chassis was made. In this way the team could fully focus on the implementation of the technology and put less effort in the overall safety and drivability of the race car. After two years of designing, I joined and for the year I was part of the team, we build the whole car and run the first tests.

Achievements

In the build year, the first milestones were put in place. In early January 2021, the battery pack was first tested and the result was phenomenal. The 57.6 kWh battery pack was charged (20% - 80%) within 12 minutes! This is not enough in our opinion, thus the development keeps going on to reach even lower charging times. However, 12 minutes is a big achievement and by our knowledge, this is never achieved in this setting in a car.

After the charging tests, we went to Breda International Airport in the early summer. After going to the dyno, we tested at Breda the powertrain of the revolution. With great success: the Revolution got to a speed of 205 km/h on just 750 meters runway!

On the 5th of August 2021, the time has come to finally show the world what we did and what the Revolution looked like. Down below you can find the video I produced together with Laura van Erp, Nino van der Steen and Nick Sondern.

My part in the team

I joined the team in the middle of August 2020 as the next HR- and Marketing manager. In the short transfer weeks of just 2 weeks, all the knowledge is transferred from the last team to the next and thus the first week of September the challenge began for my team and myself. To fully stop with your studies for a whole year is a big step, but it was worth it!

HR manager

As HR manager I learned to get more familiar with everyone in the team and to see if everyone was happy and still motivated during the year. Together with the team manager I did some evaluations during the year with everybody. We do this because the pressure is quite high within such a studen team and everyone wants to get the best out of his or her year. But working around 50 hours a week or more is not that healthy, but because of the team athmosphere and the goal we are working towards, this can be overcome for just a year!

In this function, to goal is to facilitate everything for the team. From administrative tasks to organizing team activities. On the otherhand in this function you are responsible for the team that comes after your year. This includes organizing info lunches or going to the University to show how much fun a team as InMotion can be! If someone is interested, than we will show to him or her the garage and the office space and eventually they will get to talk with me in a interview.

One of the many activities we organized with the team is going to the 24h of Le Mans every year. Last year, me together with two others from the business team, organized the trip to Le Mans. We went ahead with a rental van and all the tents and other utilities. The other 40+ people went by touringcar and arrived a few hours later. We had 3 very fun and exciting days of racing, partying and getting to know each other even better! Going with a race team to one of the biggest racing events is a awesome experience!

Marketing manager

My other function within the team was marketing manager. With this function comes the responsibility for all content that you can see online, but also in other media. I created newsletters, social media posts, posters and brochures. During my year I learned to use multiple Adobe Creative Cloud programs and I got interested in the art of photography.

One of the more special creations during the year was the production of the reveal video of the Revolution, that you can see above. During three days, we filmed in the south of Limburg, in the hills. Also on the circuit of Zolder, a track where our previous car had an electric lap record, and also on the High Tech Campus and our home base on the Automotive Campus. Setting this all up with the necessary permits and people was a big operation for a few students who have never done this before. However, the film days were very successfull and the result is astonishing.