You don’t need a power plant to charge, you just need a bigger capacitor sitting at the gas station that’s been filling up for a while and ready to dump into your car.
They write that they'll be at the Battery Show 2020 in Stuttgart (28 to 30 April, Booth C229.): <a href="https://kurt.energy/visit-us-at-the-battery-show-2020-stuttgart/" rel="nofollow">https://kurt.energy/visit-us-at-the-battery-show-2020-stuttg...</a><p>EDIT: Maybe they could partner up with the capacitor-electrode-made-from-Durian people? <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/super-stinky-durian-fruit-could-charge-your-cell-phone-someday/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/super-stinky-durian-...</a>
From what I keep hearing, current EV acceleration is limited by the battery discharge rates. I haven't seen anyone talk about creating a multi-tiered (hybrid) battery.<p>Have a comparatively small capacitor sit as a "battery cache" for short (5-10 second) bursts of acceleration, and let the battery be the slow but efficient & steady main energy store. This would mitigate many potential downsides to capacitors (e.g. cost, leakage, energy density, etc etc).
If I read the article in the worst possible way it suggests the hybrid capacitor stores 260 Wh/kg and produces 300 W/kg.<p>The Tesla battery stores 272 Wh/kg and produces 207 W/kg.<p>So this suggests the hybrid capacitor would charge 1.4 times faster.<p>Next question is the price, the article doesn't give a straight-forward answer other than that it's significantly more expensive. In theory (no hard proof) the hybrid capacitor would last longer.<p>Regardless, a promising development.
What does C as a unit mean in this context?<p>From the article:<p>> The power-focused variants were delivering densities of 80 and 100 Wh/kg, and were charging and discharging at 10 and 20C.<p>I don't think it is Celsius, and Coulombs (which would be the correct SI unit) doesn't really make sense. Some number of Amps would make sense, but 10 or 20 isn't very impressive.<p>Does any one know?
Something seems fishy. Capacitors voltage versus charge conforms to the equation C= 1/2<i>C</i>V*V
with half the voltage you have only 25% of the charge remaining!
With a battery, you have the 2 half cell potentials that sum to the rated voltage. As you discharge, this is a flat line voltage until the charged element is depleted and it goes to zero, (discharged).
This has the ring of a scheme to get investor $$
Seems like an eternity we've been hearing/waiting for super capacitors to become a thing. They seem to be the final puzzle piece in EV adoption. Not having to wait hours to "fill up" at the recharging station will be huge.
It's weird for someone selling an ostensibly breakthrough EV energy storage system to say that he's mostly focusing on plugin hybrids. Batteries aren't the major contributor to cost or complexity in PHEVs.
Lithium batteries don't explode. They melt down and then catch on fire when pierced. You have plenty of time to get away, just don't get stuck right next, under or above them.