The future of electric vehicles, EV increasingly points to the use of ultracapacitators.
The gist, ultracapacitors, or sometimes called supercapacitors, are a special form of batteries that have a good applications for EVs. Think of it as a quick charge battery that delivers excellent quick burst of energy. In this case, it makes perfect sense for an EV that needs quick accelerations. In fact, the use of ultracapacitors, coupled with other batteries will keep them running longer, since it won’t over work them.
When Car Makers Get In On It. The problem is that until now, they have only been used in prototypes but not in mainstream cars. That is until we heard this Honda interview, via Gas2. In fact Honda had started working on ultracaps a while back, which eventually led to the hydrogen powered FCX and Clarity. Ultracaps can be made of carbon-based materials and require no use of rare metals, such as lithium batteries which adds to the costs.
Hybrid Batteries, The Future Of EVs. Finally the future of EVs looks like it will go through the use of some sort of “hybrid battery” system. AFS Trinity’s results have been impressive to say the least, 160,000 miles lithium battery pack before changing them, 150 mpg, etc, all with the use of both types of batteries.
We should see more news this year of ultracaps joining the race with EVs and HEVs, especially in the plug-in hybrid, PHEV area.