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Old 02-17-2013, 01:06 PM   #10 (permalink)
GreenHornet
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The Skelcaps are avail in fact I have the price sheet if you guys would like to see :-) They are spendy but you get what you pay for!

There are other companies here in the states who produce these high level caps one in particular is IOXUS out of NY State. They sale them commercially along with there Supercap-Lithium hybrid batteries which is another option. If you guys are interested I can point you in there direction and where to get them.

The caps main function is a support role such as for starting, aux power to radio, lights etc., regen braking, and load leveling.

They are not intended to replace the battery. However done correctly as suggested you could reduce Lithium or whatever battery chemistry pack size. Note you would have less range with this strategy. If you tried to replace the entire battery pack with current supercap energy levels you would be highly disappointed even in an extremely aerodynamic lightweight vehicle. Even at 10 wh/kg the supercaps would not last long you would be hand pushing the car in no time! The capacitor bank would be bulky heavy and cost prohibitive for any DIY guy or auto manufacturer for that matter. As stated above they can and have been used in drag racing and in fact the students from BYU hold a NEDRA world record in there classification. The car is a donated GM EV-1 that runs completely off of Maxwell Ultracaps! Google it and you can read all about it.

Until they commercially develop the Graphene supercaps which will most likely not be in our lifetimes driving on an ultracap bank probably will not happen. Unless you just want to go around the block :-)

The strategy for ultracaps would be for regen braking and start stop tech in BEV or in a hybrid design. If setup in this fashion they will help extend battery life. A company in Japan produced an ultracap-lead acid hybrid which they named the ULTRABATTERY and it was able to extend the lead acid battery life by a nice fraction. Similar companies have done it with other battery chemistry's such as Lithium Ion and Iron. ultracap pricing has been coming down faster than battery pricing however its still spendy.

Good Luck,

GreenHornet
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