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Old 07-09-2013, 11:43 PM   #7 (permalink)
RiceCake
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Earth
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Breeze - '97 Plymouth Breeze
90 day: 23.1 mpg (US)
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Capacitors have self-discharge.

Couple that with the fact that the caps don't have a lot of amp-hour capacity, and your car will undoubtedly pull a tiny trickle of current to keep your clocks and settings in order...

So unless you plan to charge the car after it sits a few hours (which will undoubtedly result in a totally dead capacitor bank), you'll need a battery.

And then you've defeated everything.

Neat idea though as a boost option. If you could get 6 seconds of cranking out of a bank of them, it would be nice to have in winter.

2000+ cranking amps for the win

Edit: Also without inter-cell balancing, a single cell could (theoretically) be overcharged by the cars alternator, resulting in a nasty explosion (or just the cap venting, YMMV).

Last edited by RiceCake; 07-10-2013 at 12:30 AM..
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