Helmond, March 19, 2021 - Is electric racing the future of motorsports? If it is up to student team InMotion, certainly. In the last quarter of 2020, a glimpse of the design of the latest Endurance Racer from the Helmond-based student racing team was already revealed. They recently reached another milestone and conducted the first tests with the battery pack. With this, a big step towards "Electric Refueling" has been made.
The InMotion team used TNO's testing facilities at Automotive Campus to test the battery pack, the heart of this unique electric LMP3 race car, for its fast charging capabilities. Indeed, the team's goal is to charge the race car as fast as a fuel car is refueled, or "Electric Refueling."
"To avoid too many variables in the test, we recreated our refrigerant system using a modified system made available by TNO," said Rutger Bell, battery pack engineer. "In addition to charging, we also looked closely at the discharge capacities; the more efficiently the battery pack discharges, the better the powertrain can use the energy."
During the week, the battery pack performed well. "We are extremely happy with the initial results; our battery pack can charge in the way we expected. But even more proud, we are of the fact that charging takes only 12 minutes". And that's not for nothing; in fact, the goal is to showcase the "Electric Refueling" technology at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The team wants to charge the race car within 7.5 minutes this year.
During testing, the team performed multiple discharges based on driving cycles. "The battery pack provided the power and energy needed to race 7 laps on the Zandvoort circuit and two laps on La Sarthe, the circuit on which the 24 Hours of Le Mans are held. Both driving cycles were performed at the realistic racing pace of the car."
Alongside the good news, there are also plenty of challenges for the team: the tests also revealed that some subsystems need to be optimized in the future. The cooling system did not work optimally, causing the batteries to get too hot at some point. InMotion's next step is to address the challenge with the cooling system.
"The team is already extremely proud of this achievement and we think it's a great first step towards "Electric Refueling," let the more than proud team manager know. "We look forward to the moment when we can show our race car to the world on May 17."
About InMotion
In 2015, the first race car, called the 'Fusion', was built by the student racing team InMotion. The Fusion is a true racing machine and has set 3 electric lap records; at Circuit Zandvoort, TT Circuit Assen and Circuit Zolder. However, the car had one downside; the race car could only do 3 full race laps (an outlap, hotlap and an inlap). After that, the car was empty and had to be recharged for an hour. This is a challenge that not only the team faced, but a pillar that dominates the entire electric car market. Triggered by this challenge, the team started focusing on the future and saw the possible solution in "Electric Refueling". Since 2018, the team has been working on this charging technology and the team's LMP3 race car in which this technology is used.
