The idea for the race was formulated by scientists Christian Joachim and  in Toulouse, France in January 2013 in the ACS Nano journal. A call for applications was launched to give the participating teams time to prepare appropriate nanocars. The race is officially announced by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in November 2015 in Toulouse during Futurapolis1. On this occasion, five teams presented their prototype projects on November 27, 2015.
The first race in the world of this type, between four vehicles, started on the 28 April 2017  at the CEMES-CNRS in Toulouse and lasted 36 hours. The Toulouse organizers also agreed on the competition of two more vehicles, which will then be remotely controlled via Internet from the CEMES-CNRS race room on the microscope of their own laboratory. These relates to the vehicles from Ohio and Graz-Rice.