A racing car that can be recharged in less than four minutes, the next-gen EVs from a Dutch university attracted world attention

3 min 56 sec - On July 13th, the Revolution, the world's fastest recharging racing car, was unveiled in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven. The recharging time, which takes generally more than 30 minutes for an ordinary electric vehicle (EV), has been reduced to the same level as refuelling a petrol car. Long recharging times have been a bottleneck in the spread of EVs, and this technology is attracting a lot of attention as a solution to this problem.

This ground-breaking battery technology was developed by InMotion, a student team from Eindhoven University of Technology. Apart from their university studies, the team is formed every year by a group of volunteers to develop the next generation of EVs. There are several such student teams in the Netherlands, and they are having a significant impact on innovation in the country.

Battery pack cooling technology is the key to fast charging

The secret behind recharging in less than four minutes is the cooling system of the battery. When a battery is charged, its temperature rises, making it less efficient at capturing new energy and shortening its lifespan. Therefore, a major challenge for the EV industry is how to efficiently cool the battery and maintain the appropriate temperature while charging.

To explain the basics of batteries, EV batteries are made up of a 'module', which consists of several 'battery cells', the smallest constituent unit of a battery. Multiple of these modules are connected and put in a box to form a single system package, which is called a 'battery pack'.

Most EV’s the modules are cooled on one side of the module, which is why charging takes longer. The new cooling technology developed by InMotion, on the other hand, cools each individual battery cell in the module at once.

"We run a cooling solution between the cells to lower the temperature of them. This has never been done before in the automotive industry," explains Hieke van Heesch, Partnership Manager at InMotion.

'When you take an ice box to the beach, you can place ice in the bottom of the box, right? That keeps the drinks in the box cold, but if you fill the box with ice, the drinks stay colder for longer. That's the same principle as what we did" (van Heesch, same below in brackets).

Target: '24 Hours of Le Mans'

The InMotion battery pack contains eight modules. The battery capacity is 30 kilowatt-hours (kWh) and a racing car can complete eight laps of a 5 km-circuit on a full charge.

“Since racing cars run at speeds of around 250 km/h, they require an enormous amount of energy. ?So the range on a full charge is about 40 km, but in the situation of the ordinary passenger cars running at 100 km/h, it can travel 250 km on a full charge, which is quite convenient”

Can this innovative battery pack cooling technology be applied to current EVs?

“The bottleneck is that our technology still requires a lot of engineering. The cooling design of the ordinary EV has about 30 connections to feed the water needed to cool the module, but with our new cooling method, there are over 800 connections. In a racing car, the battery pack is experiencing lots of vibrations while driving, and we don't want any of the connections to come loose and leak water. That's why it's designed so that all the connections are tight and push against each other, so that the right amount of weight is applied."

InMotion's aim is not to commercialise EVs in the immediate future, but to demonstrate the potential of EVs. It is to develop unique technologies and inspire universities and the automotive industry.

“If our technology can be used in a racing car, it can be applied to any car. And if we students can develop this in a year, so can large car manufacturers. We want to show that we can make the world greener."

InMotion's ultimate goal is to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the biggest long-distance race in the world. The team believes that if EVs can run in this most gruelling race, there will be no barrier to EVs in general. To get one step closer to this goal, the team plans to actually race other cars (petrol-powered) on the circuit next year.

Diverse student teams with only highly motivated

InMotion is a student team in which each September a new group of students take over the project, with selection taking place before the summer break.

“It's like setting up a small company, where the current team selects the members for the next year. The point of selection is mostly motivation, because you have to pause your studies for a year and invest all your energy into this project, so you have to be highly motivated and have a belief in the goal"

This year's team includes 17 full-time and 13 part-time students. Full-timers are contracted to work 45 hours a week on a completely volunteer basis, without university credits or payment. In addition to the local Eindhoven University of Technology and Fontys University of Applied Sciences, the team also includes students from Delft University of Technology and Tilburg University.

The students' majors are also diverse, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, industrial design, architecture, biomedical engineering and law. There are eight female students in this year's team, which is many for a racing car project.

'Any motivated student can apply. I myself am a Technical Innovation Science student and at university I study how people use technology. But I don't do anything technical in this team, I liaise with partner companies. There are more than 80 partners involved in this project, so I enjoyed working with people from different specialisations while expanding my network."

Before the deadline, they worked more than 100 hours a week, sometimes bringing a sleeping bag and staying overnight in the office. They even drove to the UK and Germany to get components as quickly as possible.

After completing the year-long project, van Heesch says, “It feels weird”. In autumn this year, she will return to university to start her master's course. However, she will not leave the project completely.

'Luckly for us, every Wednesday night we have a 'team evening' where old members also get together - some from 5-6 years ago - and we all brainstorm and we eat together. We also celebrate the success of each year's project, saying 'We did it!'"

Everyone brings their knowledge to support the student team even after their graduation, including seniors who work for large local companies, and others who set up their own start-ups.

University student teams are part of the local ecosystem

There are several student teams like InMotion at Eindhoven University of Technology alone, each developing the next generation of automotives on different themes.

TU/ecomotive is one such team. The team also changes members every year and presents one 'world first' ecological concept car a year. The seventh generation car, ‘ZEM’, which was unveiled last year, stunned the world with its innovative idea of absorbing carbon dioxide while driving.

This year, the team has just launched its eighth car, ‘Eterna’ under the concept of ' a car that lasts a lifetime'. Separating the durable bottom part of the car, such as the steering system, brakes and suspension, from the upper part, such as the interior, cameras and sensors, which have a short life cycle, the team developed a car that can be used for a long time by replacing only the top part while maintaining the bottom part.

Meanwhile, another team, Solar Team Eindhoven, is renowned for winning the Australian solar car competition ‘Bridgestone World Solar Challenge’ four times in a row.

The team does not participate in the competition from 2021 onwards, but instead develops a concept car using solar energy.

This year the team developed the ‘Stella Terra’, an off-road vehicle that runs entirely on sunlight, and just unveiled on September 14th.

When we asked Nick Boksebeld, the team's System Architect Electrical Engineering, what the team's strengths are, he replied that they have "motivated people" and “flat relationships and an open environment for free exchange of ideas". According to him, they do not rule out any ‘impossible ideas’.

The Netherlands has not been mentioned as a major place for 'European automotive industry', but in fact, research into the next generation of automotives is quite advanced. Helmond, ?the southern city of the Netherlands is home to the 'Automotive Campus', where companies, universities and research institutes come together to develop new technologies to support the next-generation automotive industry. The student teams mentioned above also actively interacts with people from companies and research institutes there.

?With the EU market banning the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2035 onwards, the automotive industry faces many challenges. Against this backdrop, the open innovation scene in the Netherlands, which involves the free thinking of university students, will attract more and more attention.