In the electrification of industrial machinery, time is a strategic asset.
The companies that win are not just the ones with the best technology—they’re the ones that can deliver it first. Today’s safety standards are more advanced than ever, and the engineering behind modern electric powertrains reflects that progress—robust, intelligent, and deeply refined. But this level of sophistication comes at a cost: complexity and control. If not addressed with foresight and precision, these elements can slow development and stretch the timeline between concept and market readiness.
At Inmotion, we’ve built our development model around a simple but powerful idea: reducing time to market means anticipating, designing smarter, testing earlier, and building products that are ready for the real world before the first customer even asks. This is a story about foresight and about two strategic pillars that make our approach work: designing for compliance from day one and building standardized products that are anything but generic.
In the industrial world, compliance is a gatekeeper. It determines whether a product can be sold and whether it can be trusted in the field. For many OEMs, it’s also a source of delay. A component that performs good in the lab can still be sidelined for months if it doesn’t meet the right certification requirements.
That’s why we treat compliance as a design input.
Consider UL 583, the safety standard that governs electric industrial trucks in North America. For companies building electric forklifts, it’s a non-negotiable requirement. And yet, many suppliers only begin thinking about UL 583 after the product is already built. That’s a mistake we’ve learned not to make.
When we began developing our electric motors for material handling applications, we started with UL 583 on the table. We studied its requirements—creepage and clearance distances, insulation protocols, thermal limits—and we included them into the design from the very beginning. That meant choosing materials, geometries, and manufacturing processes that would pass UL’s scrutiny without modification.
Then we went a step further. We submitted our motors to UL Solutions for testing and recognition—not as a last-minute checkbox, but as a strategic move. By the time our customers saw the product, it was already certified. There were no delays, no surprises, and no need for them to shoulder the burden of compliance themselves.
This approach paid off in our work with one of our main customers, one of the world’s leading forklift manufacturers. When they approached us for a new electric drivetrain solution, we offered a motor that was already UL-recognized. That changed the conversation. They were able to integrate it into their platform with confidence. The result was a faster development cycle, a smoother certification process, and a product that reached the market ahead of schedule.
But UL 583 is just one example. Across our portfolio, we design with a wide range of standards in mind: ISO 26262 for functional safety in road vehicles, ISO 13849 for off-road machinery, ISO 21434 for cybersecurity, and IATF 16949 for automotive-grade quality. Our software development is aligned with ASPICE, ensuring that our code is as robust and traceable as our hardware. The goal is always to eliminate compliance as a bottleneck and turn it into a competitive advantage.
To understand how this plays out in practice, let’s look more closely at the aforementioned project with one of our main customers.
The challenge was to develop a new generation of electric forklifts that met strict safety standards, delivered high torque in compact spaces, and could be brought to market within a tight development window. The timeline was aggressive. The regulatory requirements were strict and non-negotiable.
Because we had already designed our motors with UL 583 in mind, we were able to present a solution that was fully certified. The results? We skipped months of back-and-forth with testing labs and allowed the customer to focus on system integration rather than component validation.
As the design evolved, they needed to adjust the motor’s winding configuration to better match their torque curve. In a traditional development model, that change would have triggered a new round of compliance testing—adding cost, complexity, and delay. But because we had certified the entire product family, not just a single motor, we were able to support the change without restarting the certification process. The compliance was already covered.
That flexibility—combined with our modular software platform—meant we could adapt quickly to customer’s evolving needs without compromising the schedule. The result was a product that met every requirement, passed every test, and reached the market on time.
The second pillar of our strategy is standardization—but not in the way most people think about it.
In many industries, “standard product” is code for “one-size-fits-all.” It implies rigidity, compromise, and a lack of customization. At Inmotion, it means something very different. For us, standardization is a platform—a foundation that allows us to move faster, adapt smarter, and deliver tailored solutions without starting from scratch every time.
Our product families—DCDC converters, high-voltage inverters, low-voltage inverters—are built around modular architectures. Each family includes multiple hardware variants, supporting different cooling methods, motor feedback sensors, and voltage ranges. These variants are part of the design from the beginning, and they’re developed with the same rigor and certification strategy as the base models.
This matters because it gives our customers flexibility without delay. If a customer needs a different winding configuration or a longer stator stack to meet a specific torque requirement, we don’t have to go back to the drawing board because we’ve already certified the family. The change is supported, the compliance is covered, and the timeline stays intact.
On the software side, we take the same approach. Our platforms are modular, with a clear separation between the core control logic and the application layer. That means we can adapt to a customer’s communication protocols, calibrate for their specific motor, or integrate with their vehicle control unit—all without rewriting the entire software stack. The heavy lifting is already done, what remains is fine-tuning.
This balance between standardization and customization is what allows us to move quickly without sacrificing precision. We’re offering proven platforms that can be tailored to fit, like a well-cut suit that only needs a few adjustments.
Reducing time to market is mostly about strategic positioning. For an OEM, launching a product six months earlier can mean being first to meet a new emissions regulation, first to win a major fleet contract, or first to establish a foothold in a growing market. It can mean faster feedback loops, quicker iteration cycles, and a shorter path to profitability.
But speed without reliability is a false economy. That’s why our approach is built on both. By designing for compliance from the start and building modular, adaptable product families, we give our customers the best of both worlds: the ability to move fast, and the confidence that what they’re launching is safe, certified, and ready for the real world.
Inmotion’s strategy is built on a foundation of foresight, structure, and adaptability. Here’s what makes it work:
Together, these practices form a development model that can set the pace of the electrification journey.
The electrification of off-highway and industrial vehicles is a non-stop race where agility is everything. And agility doesn’t come from cutting corners. It comes from building the right foundation.
At Inmotion, we’ve chosen to invest in that foundation. We’ve chosen to design for compliance before the first sketch, to build standard products that are flexible, modular, and ready to adapt. And we’ve chosen to partner with our customers as enablers, helping them move faster, with confidence.
Author: Francesco Patroncini