14 April 2025, Nuenen, the Netherlands — This week, Electude celebrates its 35th anniversary with a journey through the past, a new brand identity that reflects our present, and a look ahead to a bright future.
Founded on 13 April 1990 by Koen Berends and John Vlaar, two students with a shared passion for cars, technology, and education, Electude has grown into a global leader in automotive learning solutions.
However, the story begins even longer ago. In the 1980s, Koen and John transformed an old building into a workshop to pursue a bold dream: a year-long road trip from the Netherlands to China in a modified Citroën 2CV. They customised two old cars for the journey, but their plan was cut short, blocked by the closed borders of Iran due to the war with Iraq.
It was the end of a short-lived dream but the beginning of a long-standing mission. Koen and John, joined by fellow tech enthusiasts such as Hans van der Riet, continued exploring the world of cars, electronics, and early computers. Meanwhile, the pair of electrical engineering students earned money by fixing 2CVs and, later on, Citroën DSs.
When the time came to choose a graduation project, they came across a request from the Ministry of Education to develop a curriculum in automotive technology for secondary technical schools. That was the inception of a new dream: transform automotive education to meet the needs of technical students, who learn best by doing.
Automotive instruction faced three major challenges: the rising complexity of vehicle technology, the limited attention span of learners, and the unsuitability of traditional teaching methods for technical students. The solution? Engaging, interactive learning tools designed to make education more intuitive, exciting, and practical.
Instead of graduating, Koen and John once again chose a bolder path: they founded a company that would revolutionise how automotive students learn. On a Friday the 13th, they registered their company under the name Electude, a combination of the French word étude (study) and electronics.
From Discs to Digital: A new learning era begins
Electude started as a breeding ground for innovation. We were at the intersection of education, technology and electronics, with one foot in industry and the other in education. And with the conviction that electronics was a wonderful subject, but it was taught in the wrong way. This realisation was the basis for the educational revolution that Electude would later bring. But in those first ten years, between 1990 and 2000 or so, we were still busy experimenting, discovering and building—and slowly we started to develop a whole new vision on learning.
Koen Berends
Electude’s early years were devoted to creating hardware and educational materials distributed on CD.
In 1994, Electude launched the Connect Engine Management System, where parts of automotive electronics were connected to a computer, providing students with a discovery-based learning experience.
In 1999, the company set an original new strategy: To build a fully online learning system with interactive, gamified educational modules.
In six years, they had a working system with the first content stored and running on a server. In 2009, with the investors Peter Nientker and Frans van Belle on board, Electude adopted a scalable, international Software as a Service (SaaS) business model.
By 2015, the vision had become reality. Electude had a complete Learning Management System (LMS) with over 1,000 interactive modules in 15 languages. The following year, the introduction of Classroom, a comprehensive teaching solution, secured Electude’s dominance in the Dutch market. At the same time, international expansion accelerated, with local teams in the Netherlands and the United States, supported by a growing global reseller network.
From 2016 onward, Electude’s growth skyrocketed. The platform was fully accredited and integrated with school systems, and the company saw annual growth of 20–25%.
In the last decade, Electude has also contributed to a number of education, social, and environmental initiatives, including providing testing software, judging, and exhibition support for local, national, and international WorldSkills competitions.
In 2021, John stepped down for personal reasons, leaving behind a legacy of hard work and, in his own words, “doing really fun things”. For him, every challenge along the way was worthwhile, because Electude’s impact on educators and learners made it all meaningful.
It is not about how many millions you will turn over this year. It is about someone saying: ‘what you do is meaningful’. It is about that Flemish teacher who came to our training complaining he was sent by his manager. A year later, he came to me and said: ‘John, you have changed my life. I am no longer a police officer; I am a coach. I have students who ask for homework when they have been sick for a day. And students who ask for more tasks because they are so much fun’.
John Vlaar
2025 and onwards
Today, Electude is a global market leader in educational content for automotive training. With 130 employees in 12 countries, our solutions have empowered over 1 million students, 60,000 teachers, and 4,000 institutions in more than 70 countries.
As we look to the future, Electude remains committed to its founding mission: to reimagine how technical students learn, helping them achieve their full potential. We are committed to continuing to transform technical education through strategic focus, innovation, scalable growth, and a refreshed brand identity.
About Electude
Electude is the innovation leader in automotive technology education. With learning solutions in light vehicles, heavy vehicles, electric vehicles and training aids, it offers a highly adaptable platform that performs equally well in the classroom, the workshop, or at home.
Since its founding, Electude has empowered more than 100,000 teachers and over 1 million students across 4,000+ schools worldwide. Today, Electude’s learning solutions are used in more than 70 countries and are available in over 45 languages.
