Latest technological developments aimed at the energy transition in automotive
ICT Group and InMotion have announced a lengthy extension of their partnership. For the next three years, the parties will collaborate on the latest technological developments. InMotion is a team of students at TU Eindhoven and Fontys Hogescholen that aims to develop an electric race car to help accelerate the energy transition in the automotive industry. InMotion is currently focused on reducing the charging time.
ICT Group and InMotion have been working together since 2015. The Motar team of ICT Electronics in particular plays an important role. Motar is ICT Group's platform for model-based software development for vehicles. Engineers can use the platform to graphically compile a functional model in the familiar environment of MATLAB/Simulink. From the Simulink model, the platform automatically and flawlessly generates the associated software for the electronic control units (ECU) of TTTech Auto.
'The Revolution' race car
InMotion started building its current race car design, The Revolution, in 2019. During its test drives on Circuit Zandvoort, the car already achieved a top speed of 260 kilometres per hour. According to the models, this performance could be pushed even further towards 300 kilometres per hour. The battery pack remarkably has the same capacity as a standard Tesla model 3 (58 kilowatt hours), but can be charged at twice the speed, in less than twelve minutes. The InMotion team is currently working on the next generation battery pack, aiming to reduce the charging time to mere minutes. The ultimate goal of InMotion: to build the first fully electric car in the world to finish the 24-hour race of Le Mans.
Partnership with Inmotion and TTTech Auto
Koen Peppelman, Business Unit manager ICT Electronics at ICT Group, is very excited about the partnership and the collaboration with both InMotion and TTTech Auto, supplier of the high quality ECUs. "We are thrilled to contribute to InMotion's goal of making a battery recharge as quick as a refuel. Because we are at the forefront of many new developments in the automobile industry, we were able to successfully develop the Motar platform. The platform supports the most complex part of innovation processes: generating embedded software for the vehicle's controller (ECU) from the control model. In the case of InMotion, the ECUs are used to control every single electronic function of the race car."
Making the world a little greener
InMotion wants to challenge the automobile industry with the extremely short charging times of its race car. By demonstrating that the charging time of electric vehicles can be cut significantly – and even become comparable to refueling a traditional car – they hope to remove the final threshold for the global adoption of electric driving and make the world a little greener. ICT Group is positioned to make an important contribution to this goal.
Hieke van Heesch, Partnership manager at InMotion, is equally excited about the collaboration: "InMotion and ICT Group have been working together successfully for years. The expertise that ICT Group has in software and the Motar platform is crucial to help improve the race car. By extending our partnership, our engineers will not only continue to receive excellent support, but they will also have access to the new high-quality ECUs of TTTech Auto, enabling us to make significant strides in the future."