Ultramotive’s principal engineers starting working together in 1995 when they began designing and building the award winning ‘Sunshark’ solar car. The team finished the 1996 World Solar Challenge in 5^th place, winning our class and being the first Australian team to finish. The team also received the prestigious ‘GM Award for Technical Innovation’. Sunshark went on to many outstanding performances and awards culminating in its 3^rd placing in the 1999 World Solar Challenge and a 2^nd ‘GM Award for Technical Innovation’.

Matt and Ben then went to Switzerland to design electric assisted bicycles for Velocity. This bike is currently sold as the Izip Express in the United States.

After the retirement of Sunshark in 2000, some of the Sunshark team turned their hand to the development of the Ultracommuter. The Ultracommuter was designed to be an ultra high efficiency commuter vehicle that could travel 40km a day just on solar charge. Matt Greaves PhD thesis revolved around the development of a wheel motor suitable for driving the Ultracommuter. It is this development work which lead to the motor that is available today.

Towards the end of the Ultracommuter project Matt and Ben formed Guymer Greaves Creative Engineering, a engineering consulting service. Bernie later joined in 2004 to form GWG Creative Engineering which undertook a large amount of motor development as well as engineering consulting services. This included the development of wheel motors that were used by the Waikato University version of the Ultracommuter which competed in the Greenfleet Class of 1997 World Solar Challenge.

In April 2009 GWG became incorporated as Ultramotive Technologies to facilitate the commercialisation of the electric motor technology. Our latest motor design was coupled with our own fixed reduction gearbox and installedd in a brand new Honda Civic. This vehicle competed in the first Global Green Challenge from Darwin to Adelaide, proving the reliability and performance of the motor design.