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I bet ya one BJ that it’s going to be so obscenely expensive it will become a flop until a consumer electronics company sells a cheaper version for something like a portable game console or maybe an upgraded wiimote.
Capacitors; Good. Fire; Bad.
This unit can run an electric car.
The central questions about capacitors is how much weight to how much stored power? For hybrids they can become a sort of electric spring, storing up stopping energy and releasing it for takeoff. I hope.
As a hybrid driver, I’ve wished that my car had the ability to suck up deceleration and redistribute that wealth as acceleration. Flywheels might do that as kinetic energy, but a capacitor might flip between quick charge and quick discharge fast enough to do the job.
Or… it may just mean that the future of really big flash units is assured.
#3 Well, Marc, thanks for the story, but they say “a highway-speed vehicle,” not a watt-hour-powered SUV.
I’m always wary of press releases that literally include the words “No bullshit in this.” It’s kinda like people who say “Trust me on this,” or “I can guarantee you…”
They don’t mention the actual storage capacity, just talk all around it because we, after all, can’t handle the truth.
“It’s all certified,” said Weir. “No bullshit in this.”
I like the guy already. Now, if I could just find that flux capacitor I’ve got around here …
Buzz, current Hybrids do use your braking power to recharge the batttery.
My BS filter is getting overloaded here. I know how capacitors work; they don’t work like batteries. And vice versa.
Yeah, Buzz… what kind of hybrid do you drive? Mine recharges the battery when coasting and even more when I lightly press on the brake pedal.
EEStor’s biggest problem is that they’ve had to put first production runs back a couple of times as VC money has been drying up. There is a small problem with the economy right now.
You may have noticed. Though, it’s fundamentally strong, right?
http://tinyurl.com/6juvv8
#11. Thanks for that link to the earth2tech.com, EeStor article. Funding, makes this bird go up.
It’s interesting to see the negative responses here… frankly, I’m stunned.
This is the other side of the candle stick folks. Batteries will become more like capacitors and capacitors are going to become more like batteries. The effort needs to be made on both ends and meet in the middle.
Hybrids suck for a number of reasons but more importantly they need gas because of the weight issues of having a lot of batteries to store enough energy to get far enough.
In large car stereo systems they use huge capacitors to smooth out the power delivered and allow large/quick pulls of power to drive woofers, without blowing up the batteries, etc…
It’s bad for batteries to try to over draw from them in short on and off spurts… which why and where most of the gas is used when using hybrids. Just a like a woofer, they need some capacitors to rescue them… instead of gas.
I suspect at launch and even several years from now it will be a combination of the two technologys that will hit it home. A hybrid with a couple of super capacitors thrown in to make for instant charges, instant storage of braking power (instead of the lossy recharging of batteries), etc… Batteries suck at storing power quickly and effectively. Supercapacitors are part of the future to get us to gasless nurvana (or close to gasless).
Eventually as this technology branch matures (better & cheaper), it will take over completely from batteries (or the lines will blurr).
This implementation might not be the one, but the idea is.
Moving to a transportation system with all, or even a large minority of, electric vehicles is going to radically change the way the grid and parking operates.
These are able to take tons of energy in a short burst and then bleed it back slowly.
The point is that you can fill them up at a station, like a gas car. You can also use them in a parking structure to help smooth the needs of the building next to the parking structure.
The grid is going to need to have more capacity, greater ability to move power over vast distances (from Texas windfarms to midwestern cities for example), and a smart way of channeling the power to needed zones. To the residential zones in the morning, and then to the business zones in the afternoon. Using the cars themselves to almost piggyback the power people will need throughout the day.
Big exciting stuff!
If not for cars, it can probably be used in Iraq…
I posted about this here a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been following this Co for a couple of years. They aren’t any closer now than they were in ’05. At least based on their press releases. There is no company website.
Wow hostility to new tech always amazes me, even when its proven tech.
First off, I drive a hybrid Camry. I am averaging 40-50mpg depending on how I drive, and I get 600 miles out of a tank. In the last year alone, it has saved me the cost of the premium over the standard 6 cylinder Camry.
Gear heads are using hybrid, because it is the easiest and cheapest way to add 40-60hp to your engine. You take off the starter, and the alternator. Put a a big electric motor where the alternator was, then do some simple electrical work. Charge the motor to start the car. When the electrical motor is spinning on engine power, it becomes your alternator. Finally, you dump your battery into the electrical motor for an instant boost of power.
If gear heads are doing it to get that much extra boost, then you know they are onto something. The two I have seen in wild now, both claim to give more boost than a turbo or some exotic super charger, per dollar spent.
I just don’t understand this need for some people to be down on anything with the words “electric car” because it is happening right before your eyes. You guys are just too thick headed to see it.
Also, like it or not, GM is gonna release the Volt pretty soon, and all indications are it will be the biggest American automotive launch of all time. That will take nominal power from the grid. It just wont be like fueling now where we put 200 mw into a car in 10 minutes. Instead we do it over time, and every day.
I bet that they’ll get all kind of money for the Dems next year, but still produce nothing. I like others my BS alarm is going off and I’ll believe it when I see it.
From what I found they’re talking about 1MJ/kg and better after production. Can be charged in 5 mins with high end charge and 4 hours at home over night.
I have been carefully watching this technology, and studied the basic idea behind it. It’s more like a stacked capacitor, in a way, and so it has a very high charge to weight ratio; optimistically, better than the best lithium batteries. And yet it charges very fast, and can discharge millions of times. If it pans out (and pray that it does), along with Nanosolar style photovoltaics, it has the potential to change our reality in a radical and positive way.
Implementation of these devices would transform electricity from a transmitted commodity, that must be used shortly after creation for the most part, into a storage commodity, like propane, that can be transported in discrete units, and transferred from one storage device to another with ease. This is the essential missing piece in an all electric society, in which every person is empowered to create the new money, which is energy. Soon energy would be so cheap, stored dependably in these ultracaps, that a new golden age of building, art, and transport can be made. Solar powered blimps that never need to set down, and can produce new hydrogen for their envelopes with solar power at any time of day due to light, efficient supercaps. Cars that run hundreds of miles quietly, and can be charged as fast as you can fill up from any number of places; or perhaps, at some point, one could just swap out the cap, or perhaps even have a spare in the trunk. Product design and development could decentralize out to where they are most needed using portable renewable power. And a thousand other things, more than can be listed. This technology deserves our support lacking evidence that it is a fraud, because we don’t want to ruin a chance like that.
#19. That’s all nice and good, but
“how do we tax all that free electricity?”
That’s what the government wants to know.
#20,
You are mistaken. The government is being lobbied by evil companies to allow them to corner that market, and keep small business people out. Taxes are only one such mechanism with which rich people oppress poor people.
I’ve used a Jesus stick to discharge thousand micro-farad capacitors with a couple of thousand volts on them. Not too pleasant.
At 30 thousand farads and 3KV, a Jesus stick would be suicidal. I predict some interesting hybrid accidents.
Here is an ad for a flash light with one in it:
5.11 Tactical ‘Light for Life’ Flashlight
4-Way Power: Standard (90 lumens), Peak (270 lumens), Strobe and Standby. Includes 12V DC car charger and mounting plate. 120V AC household adapter available separately.
Here is a flashlight by 5.11 tactical that uses a new idea that sounds entirely implausible – a rechargeable flashlight with no batteries. The technology of this flashlight is based research from the hybrid car market and Dr Alexander from Flashpoint technology.
5.11 Tactical and Flashpoint Technology have entered into an exclusive partnership to bring this patented technology to you, and at a reasonable price. The new 5.11 Light for Life flashlights have a dramatically higher return-on-investment vs. other rechargeable lights and outperform competitor lights across the board.
The 5.11 Light for Life comes with a limited lifetime warranty and its internal components are rated for a life of over 50,000 cycles. (That adds up to more than 130 years if you use and recharge the light once a day!) The flashlight’s body is made from a state-of-the-art polymer that is impact, abrasion and water resistant to stand up to the intense duty we know you’ll put it through.
[You can read about it here. It’s only $169.99! – ed.]
There’s little doubt that this would help make the all electric car a practical reality. And that’s probably why many of its patents are owned by a large oil company (Exxon Mobile, I think). One might argue that major oil companies are putting money into alternative energy technology to help the planet. But its more likely that they’re only interested in saving their most profitable commodity, by stifling and delaying the newer technologies. We put a man on the moon in less than 10 years. But in almost 20, we still don’t have mass produced electric cars. Who’s been dragging their feet, entering into the 21th century? The cabal of major oil and automakers. And they’re only going to give us token alternatives, at very high prices, until they’re forced to do otherwise.
#7; Yes, yes, yes, and at about 20% recovery, if that. The speed of charging a BATTERY is far slower and less efficient than a capacitor.
My robots are trembling in anticipation!
This is a great new promising technology for automotive and other applications. There are, however, two important issues…
1) There is still no such thing as a free lunch – the electric power for charging still has to come from somewhere. The power grids would need to be beefed up significantly to handle the added demand.
2) Safety – as WmDE noted, a super-capacitor that is shorted/crushed/damaged (as in a crash) can discharge all of its energy almost instantly. This can be far more devastating than an exploding gas tank. Safety measures need serious research.
That being said, it is still a promising technology.
A.Aslett, Professional Engineer
Ontario Canada
#24 I suspect that is why this company is being so secretive, and why they remain private despite lucrative nature of stock sales; they want this tech to hit the market, rather than sitting on a shelf somewhere.
#19 Li said, “along with Nanosolar style photovoltaics, it has the potential to change our reality in a radical”
If you had been following Nanosolar you’d know that they have missed all of their announced major targets and are pretty quiet about why…
#25,
According to toyota, on my Hybrid Camry, the regenerative breaking charges the battery in parallel, so that it charges each battery individually very quickly, then the load is placed on battery in serial so that it gets the 700 volts needed to get the 60hp out of that tiny little electric motor.