Quote:
Originally Posted by Lbar
Did I miss where he said what the capacitors cost in the first vid?
|
Yes, he did say. The smaller pack was built with 6 capacitors that cost, IIRC, something like $10 each. The first pack, with bigger and cheaper capacitors, I can't recall what eh said they cost (or if he said
)
Quote:
Originally Posted by RiceCake
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). |
When you watch the videos, you'll see how he tests and answers these problems... the "mini-boost pack" lasts a whole weekend in one test, cranking the car after three nights without a new charge from the ALT. For longer duration, he ultimately hybridizes the "mini boost pack" with a small battery.
Really quite cool. But I would think that the benefit in weight-loss causes a problem for FE by loading on the alternator, which will have to charge the capacitors pretty often. This might be a fun way to attempt to copy Mazda's capacitor charging regenerative braking system.