Energy storage devices called ultracapacitors could lower the cost of the battery packs in plug-in hybrid vehicles by hundreds or even thousands of dollars by cutting the size of the packs in half, according to estimates by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, IL. Ultracapacitors could also dramatically improve the efficiency of another class of hybrid vehicle that uses small electric motors, called microhybrids, according to a recent study from the University of California, Davis.
Ultracapacitors will also enable a different trade-off in car battery designs where the batteries are more dense and higher capacity but slower chargers.
Hurray for ultracapacitors. Hope they reach the market in pluggable hybrids before the price of oil skyrockets.
By Randall Parker at 2009 August 25 11:34 PM Energy Electric CarsIt surprises me that this is news. Especially for car manufacturers.
I'm no expert in the matter, but because charge time is so much less than traditional Lithium-Ion batteries, it would seem useful for a car to run from ultracapacitors directly instead of batteries. I think this because it seems like a simple feet to build a system where energy could be generated from the rotation of the tires and stored in ultracapacitors, so that a lightweight car could offset power usage from the batteries with an electric engine powered by the electricity generated from its movement, temporarily stored in the ultracapacitors.
Why do we still have people who believe in perpetual motion machines? Is US science education that bad?
2nd gen li-ion is pretty durable - I suspect the reduction in wear & tear from ultracaps wouldn't be worth the price.
I think they're really talking about lead-acid. Unfortunately, LA isn't very sexy, and doesn't make great PR. Even Firefly Energy's 2nd gen LA is struggling (they just laid off 1/3 their staff, and are limping along with DOD support).
Fortunately, li-ion is falling in price pretty quickly, so it probably doesn't matter much.
It is not only the reduction of wear & tear. Ultracapacitor are much more efficient than batteries. they "leak" more power than batteries but that isn't important during driving. Also part of the durability of li-ion batteries is due to only using the battery between 80% to 30% of capacity. If you use an Ultracapacitor for most of the "tear" than you can increase the minimum and maximum and that means a smaller, cheaper, battery can be used for the same storage
Ultracapacitor are much more efficient than batteries.
I believe that the difference is 99% vs 93%. Not enormous.
If you use an Ultracapacitor for most of the "tear" than you can increase the minimum and maximum
Interesting. Do you have any sources of info for the "tear" from surges?