InMotion uses Nijkerk Electronics equipment to develop fast electric charging technology

InMotion is a student team from the Eindhoven University of Technology, with the ambition to shape the future of electric mobility. They are developing a new fast charging technology called Electric Refueling with the aim to make charging as simple as refueling. The ultimate dream of Team InMotion is to prove this technology by competing with an electric race car to compete in the 24 hours of Le Mans. Nijkerk Electronics is happy and proud to support InMotion with contactors from Sensata Gigavac.

Goals InMotion

Climate change remains one of the main societal challenges humanity is facing, with road transport as one of the main contributors to carbon emissions. Whilst electric mobility offers a great solution to this problem, adoption is lagging. The long charging time is one of the reasons for this. To overcome this barrier, InMotion is developing a groundbreaking cell-level cooling technology. With this ‘Electric Refueling’ they can charge a car within 4 minutes, the fastest charging technology in the world.
To help the development of the InMotion project, Nijkerk Electronics supports them by sponsoring contactors. We spoke with Kai de Kievit, partnership manager of InMotion about the cooperation and the importance of the contactors GV351PPBX from Sensata Gigavac.

Contactors from Sensata Gigavac

The contactors from Sensata Gigavac are used as a failsafe in the electrical circuit of the battery. They can be seen as large switches that can make or break contact between two coper points extremely fast. According the Kai de Kievit “This is essential to minimize the time at which the contactors copper is close to the circuit copper but not touching. If its close but not touching, the air would experience dielectric breakdown, meaning that it becomes conductive. If this would take too much time an arc would form that welds the two pieces of copper together, removing the ability of the switch to open and losing the safety feature of being able to break the circuit. That is why contactors are essential and other types of switches like relays don’t do the trick.”
The GIGVAC GV351PPBX was chosen as the best contactor because they are rated up to 1000V and can handle 900A. Furthermore, these contactors also give feedback indicating whether they are opened or closed, making them well suited for protecting the Next Generation Battery Pack.

Great collaboration Nijkerk Electronics & InMotion

At Nijkerk Electronics we find it important to support (student) initiatives and innovations like these. Kai de Kievit, on behalf of team InMotion also expresses their happiness with the collaboration “The collaboration itself has been very pleasant. As a student team, we are always dependent on partners who support us and can provide us with parts. We are therefore very grateful to you for the fuses we have received.”