Graphene Superconductors

Fast Eddie B

Fast Eddie B

Well-Known Member
I listen to a fun little podcast called “Skeptic’s Guide To The Universe”.

One recent episode - #810, Jan 16, 2021 - had a brief but informed discussion about what are effectively “super capacitors” and how they could be used in EV’s. It starts around 10’ 26” in. They’re clearly not experts on this sort of thing, but I did find it quite interesting.

Available on your podcast aggregator of choice, or here:

https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-810
 
Fast Eddie B said:
discussion about what are effectively “super capacitors”
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Back in 1997, Honda was experimenting with "ultra-capacitors" with their pre-Insight concept car, the J-VX. Being lighter and offering greater longevity than batteries, super-capacitors offer great promise. Many companies have made those promises, but none have demonstrated an experimental super-capacitor that might compete with Li-Ion batteries.

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For those who haven’t listened, I came away thinking that super-capacitors combined with “conventional” batteries might be analogous to our Clarity’s.

I mean, we hope our 30 to 50 EV miles can handle most of our driving, with the ICE to fall back on for longer trips.

With these proposed “hybrids”, the plan would be to go the first 30 to 50 miles on fast-charging and long-lived capacitors for most driving, with the larger “conventional” battery to fall back on for longer trips.

May or may not ever pan out, but seems like a decent idea once the technology is right.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
For those who haven’t listened, I came away thinking that super-capacitors combined with “conventional” batteries might be analogous to our Clarity’s.

I mean, we hope our 30 to 50 EV miles can handle most of our driving, with the ICE to fall back on for longer trips.

With these proposed “hybrids”, the plan would be to go the first 30 to 50 miles on fast-charging and long-lived capacitors for most driving, with the larger “conventional” battery to fall back on for longer trips.

May or may not ever pan out, but seems like a decent idea once the technology is right.
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I don't believe any super-capacitors can power a car anywhere near that far at this point. When teamed with Li-Ion batteries, the super-capacitors with their ability to deliver their power more quickly would provide instant power for acceleration and would be able to absorb regen power without the charging-speed limitations batteries impose.
 
insightman said:
I don't believe any super-capacitors can power a car anywhere near that far at this point.
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Of course. And I think the guys on the podcast were up front about that. Which is also while I qualified my comment with “once the technology is right”.

Plus, as super capacitors improve in efficiency, battery efficiency isn’t sitting still either. So there may never come a time when this hybrid model is feasible. But I still like the idea.
 
Interesting. I look at it differently. Drive the car 50 miles on battery and when it reaches a preassigned low point charge it with the capacitor for another 50 miles. Drop in 4 capacitors and go 250 miles. I'm not a scientist by any means so the viability of this idea is suspect.
 
Tek_Freek said:
Interesting. I look at it differently. Drive the car 50 miles on battery and when it reaches a preassigned low point charge it with the capacitor for another 50 miles. Drop in 4 capacitors and go 250 miles. I'm not a scientist by any means so the viability of this idea is suspect.
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I don’t know if you listened to the podcast, but that would be the opposite of best practice - capacitors have a lot more potential charge cycles than batteries, so the idea is to use them first or solely, only going on battery once the capacitors are discharged.
 
Even though it's been a few years since this podcast episode was shared, the world of technology and science is ever-evolving. It's still worth exploring the fascinating developments in supercapacitors and their potential applications in electric vehicles.
 
Lournery said:
Even though it's been a few years since this podcast episode was shared, the world of technology and science is ever-evolving. It's still worth exploring the fascinating developments in supercapacitors and their potential applications in electric vehicles.
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I doubt super capacitors ever will have any application beyond being some random supporting component on a circuit board, or perhaps as a filter capacitor in an inverter. Batteries store chemical energy, capacitors store electrical energy. The technologies are very different, and fundamentally getting a super capacitor to achieve similar energy densitys to today's batteries would be extraordinarily difficult. And any reasonable sized super capacitor isn't going to be very useful in an EV, the energy required to drive a car is huge, and a super capacitor wouldn't be useful other than for extraordinary short periods of time. And even if we did have super capacitors that had high energy densitys, unless they got energy densitys around today's batteries, they wouldn't be terribly useful in an EV. If they got to the point where they had half the energy density, then you could probably find applications for hybrids where you could get more output from a super capacitor. Watts/L is a big concern for regular hybrids, not so much for an EV, and not a super big concern for a plug in hybrid.Where a super capacitor could be useful with is providing an extra kick in an auto start stop system.
 
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