Charging an EV faster than filling a gas guzzler? Surely not!?

The ability to charge an electric vehicle in just a couple of minutes is the 'game changer' that car makers and car drivers are all waiting for. Batteries will always take time to charge up, but capacitors can store charge instantly. The challenge is creating one with enough energy density to make a real difference. Now a team in the USA has taken a very big step towards that goal.
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[@jimcolleran1804]

Just a general comment. Going from lab results to cost-efficient manufacturing is a long difficult road that very few inventions survive. I wouldn't hold my breath on this one either.

[@frankdelao4067]

Not to mention capacitors break down after a few years. Even if they have solved that problem it will take years to prove it.

[@NScherdin]

@@frankdelao4067 Electrolytics die in a few decades because the electrolyte dries out. Other kinds last much much longer.

[@Mr2ronron]

Interesting if it can be replicated and scaled up to commercial potential. I saw no mention of material or fabrication costs or methods. No way to know if this is simply an interesting experiment, results to be verified, or a potentially significant development.

[@seamon9732]

Iows, capitalism massively slows down innovation.

[@pin65371]

Not just manufacturing. Also reliability. Things change when you move out a clean and safe lab environment. Even stuff like how does it handle different temperatures and swings in temperatures. Where I live we can experience 20+ degree temperature swings within 24 hours.

[@curtisbme]

Popular Mechanics has been clickbait 'science' BS before clickbait was a thing. Hell, before the internet was a thing.

[@JobyFluorine-ru4bd]

So true. It's been spewing bs since at least the '50s when they started with the flying cars that we'd all be driving "in ten years". The perfect magazine for an imaginative ten year old boy. That and Popular Science. I read them both as a child, but neither one really has much to do with science or reality.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

@@JobyFluorine-ru4bd Roughly similar to what was once called "yellow journalism."

[@1voluntaryist]

@@ronaldgarrison8478 No, that was political propaganda. I was warned/briefed in 1958 not to believe a thing in the newspapers by a 73 yr. old mentor who told me stories about the lies printed by Hurst papers that dated around the end of the century. I can extrapolate. If propaganda has deceived and helped the rulers rule for 100+ years, why not for 200+ years, in the USA? And elsewhere, since the printing press. Case in point: For the superstitious, the first big contract printing was for the Bible, King James Version.

[@richard_d_bird]

i used to read popular mechanics 50 years ago, when i was a kid, and even then i knew they were full of baloney

[@DanielEarlester]

Predatory journal?

[@greggrant4614]

Some major problems with this supercapacitor speculation for EVs: 1) On charging, the supercap buffer would quickly fill up and then you'd be limited to the rate at which the battery can charge on its own. The supercap might actually end up slowing the overall charging time for a given amount of range, if space required for the supercap reduces space available for the battery. 2) For regen or acceleration for normal stops and go's, the battery can absorb much higher rates for say 5-8 seconds than it can absorb or output sustained for the say 15-20 minutes to descend or climb a 7%/20-mile mountain grade. Basically, when you consider the tradeoffs in the use of available space and cost of the supercap vs battery for the short stops/accels and longer hill climbs/declines, plus the incremental cost and space of the power electronics to handle higher currents / power, the low energy density of the supercap makes it unattractive for practically all EV or hybrid vehicle applications.

[@louisjov]

It's funny that so many people focus on fast charging, not that it's not important, it certainly is, but imo the proliferation of level 2 destination chargers is far more important. Your car is parked most of the time, and if there are low speed, and thus low installation cost, chargers pretty much everywhere, the necessity of fast charging begins to only exit for road trips, and niche travel situations

[@joelsmith4394]

Exactly! That’s one of my favorite points. Problem is that it requires a paradigm shift in thinking from the long standing norm of “fueling up at the station” to “destination charging”. A lot of urban planners and policymakers who still haven’t got that yet.

[@haraldlonn898]

True. I have a ev and only time I have a problem is when it is time for holliday. Once a year I get problem planning the trip that extends the battery. Where and how long to wait and is there a outlet. Where we live a ev battery holds for a long trip but not for holliday.

[@louisjov]

@@joelsmith4394 it's kind of a funny thing to coming from my perspective because I'm an electrician, commercial buildings have an enormous amount of power available! Adding twenty 30 amp outlets would probably require adding 200 amp breaker in the main distribution panel, and then adding one new panel to feed all of those outlets. It's kind of stuff is done ALL THE TIME for servers in data centers, and it's a really simple job. As soon as you try to add things like fast chargers it gets orders of magnitude more complicated and expensive

[@faustinpippin9208]

We should have simple 120volt outlest on every Road side parking and IT would be more then enough for overnight charge

[@otm646]

We are deep into diminishing returns. Your everyday Tesla is going from single digits to 80% in half an hour. A Taycan in 15 min. Plus very very few people are doing 600+ mile days so they'll only have one charging stop. 15 minutes one way or the other doesn't matter on a 10 hour drive.

[@celestinarogers2935]

Thanks for summarising this paper! Very interesting!

[@hayato4574]

Why should a capacitor decrease the charging time of the battery? The charging time for the battery will always stay the same.

[@patrickgriffiths889]

They are used in tandem. Charge caps quickly, trickle into the battery. Caps won't be the full charge, but good for a splash and dash, or to shorten total charging time.

[@dogsbodyish8403]

Quite - the addition of a supercapacitor can be useful for handling short-term transients like braking and "boosted" acceleration, but won't affect battery charge times.

[@Octamed]

Charging stations themselves would greatly benifit from on-site capacitors that could supply full output to many cars, without putting the same strain on the grid to suppy at the rate needed.

[@otm646]

Your battery might be limited to charging at 300 kW. That's the bulk of your capacity, say 80 kWh but if you also had 10 kWh of capacitor that could charge at 1000 kWh your total charge session time would be shorter.

[@DaraParsavand]

@@dogsbodyish8403exactly, and this wasn’t explained very well. If you have two energy storage systems, one at 250 Wh/kg and the other at 8, maybe you can justify putting in 10-20% of your battery + cap weight into the cap side of things if it improves practical regen efficiency from 75% to 90%, but it doesn’t do a damn thing for charging the battery which has hundreds of times the energy storage. Chargers already ramp their power and don’t need caps on the car to handle spikes. So interesting for regen - and this video was very deceptive for having anything whatsoever to do with stationary charging times.

[@pandakees]

Thank you so much Dave, for chewing all this highly interesting, yet incredibly complicated data into bits that I can actually swallow.

[@otm646]

The charging time discussion is mostly over. Currently the top spec platforms like the Taycan at 350 kW are going from single digits to 80% in 15 minutes or less. What we are waiting for is that type of charging performance to come down market, and be adopted by the legacy manufacturers who are a generation behind. The biggest issue they are facing now is adequate pack cooling.

[@Chris-hx3om]

350kW from 10% to 80% in 15minutes means trying to extract 1 MEGAWATT! Most houses use less than that in a MONTH! Please explain exactly how you can deliver near on 2,000 amps of 3 phase (480V)..... (Double that current if you are using single phase. And double it again if you're in the USA, 120v. That's 8,000 amps... You are living in cloud-cuckoo land if you think that's ever going to happen.)....

[@jamesphillips2285]

@@Chris-hx3om You are mixing up kW (unit of power) and kWh (unit of Energy). Edit: "Please explain exactly how you can deliver near on 2,000 amps of 3 phase (480V)..." I saw what I believe was an Out Of Spec Podcast episode where they mentioned Fast chargers with "virtual" transformers. The initial high voltage DC conversion is just switched at medium voltage directly. With 800V architecture you are out of the "low voltage" regime (limit around 700V) anyways, I am pretty sure coils are still needed: but they can be made far smaller (dependent on switching speed).

[@daemn42]

@@Chris-hx3om This threw me for a bit, until I realized you misread the units. They're talking about a peak charging rate of 350kW for the new Taycan Turbo S and 4S, not the battery capacity in kW*h. Firstly, it was a small exaggeration as it's only rated up to 320kW. The Taycan 4S has only an 87kW*h battery. Here's a quote from an article where they tested it on a 350kW capable charging station.. "Upon plugging in the Taycan 4S, the EA station delivered 295 kW right out of the gate, going from 8% to 30% in just four minutes. By 40% the car was steadily charging at 320 kW, dropping off to 250 kW after reaching about 65%. In the end, we went from 8% to 80% in a mere 16 minutes" Yes that still appears to be 666 amps if drawing from 480V source, but some level 3 chargers are truly rated up to 350kW charging speeds, so they pull it off somehow. I think in most locations you're unlikely to get that on all the charging stations at once (and never from both ports on a single station).

[@daemn42]

@@jamesphillips2285 Following my first reply I did a little digging around, and Electrify America does not give any hint at how they achieve 350kW charging rates. Best guess is each individual charging station uses two 480V 3 phase circuits each with a 400A breaker which is an available unit of service.

[@Chris-hx3om]

@@daemn42 🤦‍♂ Yes, quite right. 320kW is the POWER output, not the storage capacity. I was thinking at the time that it was a damn big battery, but didn't think any further as I know KIA have a massive battery in the EV9.... Anyway, it's a metric sh1t-ton of copper cabling that would be needed to feed these 'fast charging' charging places. I live in Australia and any trips planned are planned around fueling (I have a diesel car with a 1,200km range, so not so important to me), but an EV with a 300km range (maybe!) is going to need to be charging at every opportunity. I can imagine a dozen EVs (not uncommon to see just about anywhere in Australia is lines of cars waiting to fuel). The supply to those charging station will need to be truly epic!

[@billgildersleeve6016]

All improvements are important to progress.

[@ChucklesMcGurk]

Progress is an illusion

[@justsayen2024]

Then go ahead and throw your cell phone into the trash because it's an illusion.

[@freeheeler09]

Nihilism is a copout

[@CJ-mx8ij]

I love the use of your orange lamps on set, it's so very novel and quite unique!

[@mrstock7986]

Interesting... Thanks Dave! [Electrical Engineer here...] But i don't really see how a buffer-capacitor bank would help with fast-charging an EV. To have this capability, one would need a capacitor-bank with, say, 80% the capacity of the EV's battery. Given the much lower energy-density of capacitors, even supercapacitors, that would be a capacitor-bank considerably larger than the car itself. 🤔 The other problem with fast-charging EVs, though, not addressed in this video, the grid-load of the charging-stations, is where _(large)_ capacitor-banks could prove to be useful. To charge a 60kWh battery (that's a _small_ EV...) in one hour, one needs to supply 60kW of power, for an hour. That's already 4 to 6 times as much power as an average European home draws in wintertime... To charge the same battery faster, say in 6 minutes, you'd need to supply 600kW. That's really an obscene amount of power. Not many places exist where the grid can provide such amounts of power. But... A capacitor-bank based fast-charger could charge itself _slowly_ from the grid, say with 50kW - 60kW, and then when an EV is connected, it could dump all that stored energy into the EV's battery in minutes (provided the battery can handle that, of course) and you're off. The brawback/compromise is that the charging-point would then need an hour or two to recharge itself before another EV can be fully charged.

[@manuelferreira4622]

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👏👏👏👏👏

[@lagmonster7789]

Everything Electric Show,just did a video on this, which featured a new ''buffered' fast charger to do exactly what you described, except it uses LFP batteries instead of miracle capacitors.

[@docwatson1134]

Yes, but...just how hefty a set of conductors do you need for 600KW?

[@bryanackerly7775]

@@docwatson1134 They already have 500kW chargers in common use in China, so maybe look that up?

[@timothybayliss6680]

​@@docwatson1134level 3 fast charging uses 480vdc, 600kw means 1200amps. You would need six strands of 3/0 copper for that. It is unlikely that a regular sized human could comfortably use a plug/receptical with that much weight on it.

[@bellshooter]

Yes , an interesting development, but there is a bit of a flaw here. The Caps/Supercaps/Ultracaps are really good at short term charge rates but pretty poor at energy/mass , this means that a hybrid battery system with a small Cap/SC/UC is great as a brake/acceleration buffer but pretty useless at battery charging as you still have to transfer the energy into the primary storage battery , and that is dictated by the primary battery capability. We have used them in the past for short duration use on tram systems that need to cross short distances between overhead lines, such as conservation areas in cities.

[@sallerc]

Exactly, I was trying to understand how the caps would help high power charing for more more than a few seconds.

[@ursodermatt8809]

yes, most uninformed do not understand that. as far as i am concerned it is just a gimmick concerning ev charging

[@patrickbeck4062]

@bellshooter Yeah, all of the times over the years I've considered ultra capacitors being pared with a battery, I always end up realising it's better off just using that weight to add more battery, except for if you use a small capacitor sized to take one hard regen, then discharge in the next few seconds of acceleration to take peak loads off the battery. Assuming that capacitor won't need replacing too often being used like that, and won't add too much more cost and complexity. Using them to reduce charge times is completely pointless until they can increase the energy density by multiple times. And at that point, the batteries will probably have a fast enough charge rate that supplying the charge at that rate will be as much of the limit as the batteries. And may not be even worth trying to improve charge rates much more. At 8.8 W/h per kg, these capacitors would only save a few seconds charging in the best case scenario.

[@rickhobson3211]

Popular Mechanics is the National Enquirer of Technology,

[@kensmith5694]

They used to be an interesting thing to read. They were often far from accurate reports but they were better about technology than the news on TV

[@DSAK55]

the Foxnews of Technology,

[@mafarmerga]

The two areas Dave mentioned, reducing EV charging times and large scale storage/response seems like the two best uses of this technology.

[@ursodermatt8809]

and two of the most contradictive as well.

[@Chris-hx3om]

Reducing charging times mean increasing charging current (it's proportional). How do you get that much current to the charging stations?

[@mafarmerga]

@@Chris-hx3om Level 3 DC charging, uses a 3-phase 480 volt AC electric circuit.

[@Chris-hx3om]

@@mafarmerga Yes, and to get the sorts of energy delivery to charge in 'fast time' requires massive current. E=IxV/h. There's no way around that formula. If you want 50kWh in 10 minutes with a 480v source, the current needs to be 50kWh/480v/0.6hr = 173 amps. That's assuming 100% efficiency in all the conversion processes (AC to DC rectification, DC current regulation, losses in the cable to the vehicle, losses inside the battery due to the way the chemical processes work). Call it 200 amps. Now, that's for each car and a 10 minute charge of 50kWh. Picture a charging station out of a city, on a main route to a holiday destination. 10 car are all lined up and plugged in. 2,000 amps!

[@patrickbeck4062]

​@@mafarmergaProbably not with such a low energy density. Makes them worse than useless for regular fast charging, if they're in the car. And for grid storage, maybe if they are extremely cheap, easy to make at scale and reliable, if they are going to have much benefit over LFP.

[@IMBlakeley]

I liked the idea of swappable batteries, like you do with Calor bottles, pull-in, drop off your flat battery and load up with an identical charged one.

[@dungbetel]

I remember when I was in Australia in the 80s, one of the universities put forward the idea of EVs running on lead-acid batteries, with petrol stations replaced by electrolyte-changing stations. I'm no expert, but it did sound plausible to me...

[@ItWasSaucerShaped]

I prefer this solution as well, but it requires too many layers of cooperation and standardization to be viable within the current market. :| And really I think the current market is so fundamental to the problem that it just needs to go too, but that's not exactly an easy sell. You'd have to have staffed battery replacement stations and a standard system across all EVs allowing them to easily release the battery as well as plug in a new one, all without the involved rig being a safety hazard on the road. Then you have to have all of these staffed battery replacement stations being willing to carry the necessary hazardous material insurance / licensing, as well as able to dispose of batteries that get dropped off that are too degraded to recharge. It's all of the costs associated with running a gas station, plus the need to actually store and dispose of batteries dropped off by customers, without the profit margins enjoyed by gas stations. And most of them would have to be full service, which adds extra costs that most gas stations have cut. EV chargers are already having issues just with installing and maintaining user-run, unstaffed charging stations. Nobody is going to put up front the capital to try and create a battery drop off station that manufacturers aren't even prepared to support.

[@rogerphelps9939]

A very poor idea. The inventory of batteries that must be socked at each charging station waiting to be fitted to a car would be huge. hese batteries are expensive and are not earning revenue while they are just sitting around. Having sttandard batteries means that manufacturers are not free to design their batteries to take advanttage of their specific vehicle layout. Swappable bateries might have made some sense when battery capacities were low and charging rates very slow. Those times thave passed.

[@ursodermatt8809]

@@dungbetel never heard of it

[@brixtonianme9717]

Have you seen any video of battery removal from a car ? it would take half a day to take one down and putting it back up, there're high voltage involved, cooling pipes and coolant liquid plus a considerable number of bolts, the batteries are heavy as well... beside the time how much would a swap cost with all the professional work and equipment needed 24/7 ? the other thing is batteries would need to be standardised, mission almost impossible as there're tto many different vehicles which are physically different and have different power and cooling requirements.

[@hammerdon1962]

I had a lot of questions about capacitors. I think you just answered them.

[@ursodermatt8809]

really?

[@johnosullivan675]

Those are going to be some chunky charging cables.

[@stefanwallgren3497]

Don't u just need // charging from caps? Could be interresting to know how China's caps run Street cars do it. Charged during stops

[@wclugston]

Lot's of electrons need BIG pipes!

[@otm646]

You would be surprised. You can see what Tesla is doing with their liquid cooled cables. To double the current capacity the diameter of your conductor only needs to increase by slightly over 25%. Plus, with such short charging sessions you can manage your thermal rise. Everything will be getting hotter, but it only has to survive that massive output for 5 minutes. Then it ostensibly will have time to cool down before the next charging session.

[@ursodermatt8809]

@@otm646 sure, but! cooled cables do not reduce resistance that markedly.

[@otm646]

@@ursodermatt8809 losses to resistance in the cable are not the issue here, it's rejecting that heat efficiently. That's why I'm discussing both the liquid cooled cables and the duty cycle of that cable. It's like having a water cooled TIG torch, It's not running 24/7, but when you're using it 10 minutes an hour you're pushing it hard for a given conductor size due to the ergonomics required by the user.

[@GroovyVideo2]

caps to store regen then import into battery or for motor for acceleration will be used

[@andrewmclean1239]

Batteries are like slow twitch muscles in a mammal and caps are like fast twitch. They could be used very effectively together.

[@skierpage]

More like fast twitch muscles that weigh so much they're not helpful; read the comments from electrical engineers. Recharging a small buffer capacitor very quickly just leaves the rest of the big battery to recharge at its usual rate. And unless you're racing flat out on a track, a conventional battery can absorb enough power in regenerative braking to slow a car to a standstill.

[@andrewmclean1239]

@@skierpage It wouldn’t be just a capacitor in parallel. It would be some trick circuitry. I remember when people said LED’s won’t be bright enough to light a room.

[@Mia-QATAR]

Whenever I hear a claim about very fast charging I look at the amount of power required to make that happen. 350kW chargers will charge an EV within 15-30 minutes. Cutting charging time in half means doubling the power supplied by the charger. It also will greatly increase waste heat which will make the process less efficient. We rapidly get to charging speeds that would require multiple Megawatt chargers. 19 times faster means over 6 MW. In my opinion, the chargers we have a pretty well as fast as we need them to be. It would be nice if they were as fast as fuelling with gas, but then again, when charging, you don't have to wait beside the car until charging is done

[@phill3986]

Increasing the voltage or diameter of the cable would reduce power loss

[@bill_the_duck]

If capacitors could power a car, capacitors could also be charged up at a charging station while a car isn't there, allowing for higher charge rates than the grid can supply, only for the small percent of the time a car is present. However that wouldn't work for multiple vehicles trying to charge in a row, and it's a moot point anyway since capacitors aren't going to be powering cars any time soon.

[@JeffBilkins]

Why copy an earlier comment? What is going on?

[@Ryan-ff2db]

Yeah, there won't be a sudden 19x increase in charging time. It will gradually increase over time as technology and infrastructure improve. Shell is deploying 360kw chargers and Mercedes/charge point are deploying 400kw. Tesla V4 can hit 615kw but they are capped at 350 for now as no battery outside of china can utilize that amount.

[@steveburden8042]

Yes, this sounds right. If an EV battery is 100kWh, then to charge it in 5 minutes would need 1200kW rate (or 5000A in Europe). Is that charge cable manageable?!

[@Kevin_Street]

Thank you for another wonderful video! You explained this new kind of capacitor very well.

[@0508694j]

This is a seriously exciting development, thanks for sharing

[@adamlytle2615]

Wouldn't the big advantage for regen be better realized if the majority of the captured power were used directly for powering the motor rather than going to the battery? So for example the car slows down and stops for a stop sign. The capacitors charge up from he regen. Then the capacitors discharge directly back to the motors for the acceleration from 0 to 40kmh or whatever and then the battery only starts discharging again when the car is rolling along at a constant speed, rather than for the big draw needed for acceleration? This would really improve efficiency for urban driving a lot, though maybe not so much for highway driving.

[@altosack]

Capacitors don’t hold enough energy to either decelerate or accelerate your car. They work best at nanosecond and microsecond scales; supercapacitors extend that to milliseconds and ultracaps to seconds, but they are far too expensive per joule stored. Current batteries, however, can provide enough power for regen and acceleration at very high efficiencies; the efficiency limitation is at the electric motor and drivetrain, not the electricity storage device.

[@rogerphelps9939]

This is how the capacitors and electric motors in foemula 1 cars work. tthe capacittors give a power boost for acceleration over a very short ttime intterval. This is important for racing cars but irrelevant for road cars.

[@ursodermatt8809]

the batteries already do that

[@adamlytle2615]

@@ursodermatt8809 yes, I understand that is how regen breaking currently works. What I'm saying - and I might be wrong! - is that batteries have a bottleneck to how much charge they can take in a few moments, and pushing the limit frequently does cause degradation in the long run. A capacitor of sufficient capacity could not only take in more power from the regen than the battery could, but would spare the battery the degradation caused by frequent rapid charge/discharge.

[@ursodermatt8809]

@@adamlytle2615 do you have an electric car? there is no bottle neck. even if there were, your bottle neck is only needed in emergency braking. "frequent rapid charge/discharge" , ??? you are driving like a hoon? even that kind of hooning will not affect a battery.

[@freeheeler09]

Hey Dave, American here, binding on KZbin science and engineering channels just because I happen to be an American at this particularly …. point and time. Thanks for your kind, calm rationality! Your show today was likely a therapy session for many of us Yanks!

[@freeheeler09]

Binging even!

[@Rick_Cavallaro]

It's best to keep in mind that Popular Mechanics has become complete B.S.

[@TheJamesRedwood]

Why do you say that?

[@veganislandradio9957]

Thanx one again Dave. When it comes to helping me stay on top of the arguments of all the electric nay sayers you are an absolute star... 🌟

[@yggdrasil9039]

I think more likely we'll see a hybrid. Having a 5kWh capacitor and a 60kWh battery would be a great match.

[@MauroTamm]

At that density, you need ~20kg of capacitors to drive 1km. If you only had capacitors, you could likely get 25km range. And if it charged up in a minute, it could work for inner city transport. I know people who only tank a few liters when they are nearly empty. It wouldn't be any different from that. They never have a full tank.

[@leftcoaster67]

It's not for storage, it's for recharging, and regen braking. It's interesting, lets see how it works outside the lab.

[@lagmonster7789]

Actually just ~3km would be enough if you combine this with a small regular battery(like 5kWh, enough for 20-30km detours) and wireless induction charging at traffic lights, parking spots and drive thru's etc. It could have some interesting possibilities for city mobility 🤔 You could easily recharge it by ~10% in mere seconds just passing over a wireless charging spot. 😁 (~20s @ 100kW,) It'd be a crazy amount of infrastructure work, but not impossible. Busses & trams could definitely benefit from a variation on this(possibly using overhead pantograf/physical connection at stops.

[@patriceblakeway4421]

Well done, thank you.

[@rafaeldegiacomoaraujo8778]

Thanks! Very good video as always

[@carlbrenninkmeijer8925]

Good news, presented so well, I only knew about electrolytic capacitors and supercapacitors. Also thanks to the team !!!

[@glasperlinspiel]

Thank you!

[@fixeroftheinternet]

Excellent video as usual Dave. Very informativ piece on an extremely important piece of research that nibody else seems to have picked ip. Well.done!

[@edwardgobbo9685]

There was an interesting theory about how batteries and capacitors could be used in conjunction with one another one day to solve the inadequacies of both for the future use of powering a car. The solution was then considered far off, as the main problem would be an easy and cheap computer management system to funnel power between one and the other in a reasonable manner, and the solution was left to some more advanced future. I read that article in '76 or "78, and I do not doubt the the problem is now solvable with current technology. But where is it? I get that the capacitors might be requiring a wholly different infrastructure for an actual deployment, and there are an awful lot of problems that would be associated in getting a standardization that would be acceptable to all manufacturers before our sun went nova. But the tech is there, and it seems more likely that its failure for enactment has more to do with consensus than competence.

[@martincotterill823]

Cheers Dave, interesting stuff, let's hope it works out

[@Julian_Wang-pai]

It's really encouraging that these niche developments in material science and other sectors are occurring ever more frequently. They just might discover the magick-wand that will save our collective rear end. And thanks for helping keep us so well informed Dave 👍🙂

[@govnr99]

I've always wondered why they don't use supercapacitors for launch from stop and regen applications; thanks for spelling it out. This sounds like great research; maybe one day, we will get to that dream.

[@JohanLofgren-jc4mh]

Yes, how much are supercapacitors used in city buses, garbage trucks, forklift trucks, elevators etc which are constantly "accelerating and braking" ?

[@pts619]

I can't imagine how robust a charging system would have to be to be able to deliver that amount of energy in such a short period of time. Note: I can actually. I just had Gemini calculate that the system would need to handle a current or around 7,500 amperes. That is to charge an average size EV battery in three minutes. Gemini also estimates that would require a copper cable 34mm in diameter.

[@patrickbeck4062]

Wait till you ask it how heavy the capacitors will have to be to have any real capacity and be able to make a difference to charge times. 8.8 W/h per kg is too low to make I worth it.

[@RichardRoy2]

Interesting. Thank you.

[@dermotdonnelly5495]

Great video as usual👏

[@What1zTyme]

Good explanation! thanks!

[@vidiia]

Hi Dave. Just wanted to say that this channel makes me feel optimistic for the future, at a time when so much else in the world is trying to make me a pessimist. So, thanks.

[@CapinCooke]

Spoken for truth. Same for me. Thank you Dave.

[@chargeheadsuk]

Very interesting, great vid ❤

[@usaverageguy]

High energy capacitors fit in the category with nuclear fission, flying cars, commercially viable solid state batteries, and level five autonomous cars. Always just five years from today.

[@barneyomulligan9739]

"Science Bods" Dave?...thanks as always.

[@histreeonics7770]

A super-duper capacitor is not going to change the recharge rate at a charge station. They can only improve regenerative braking where a large pulse is spread out so that the rate of charging the battery can be lower.

[@kellyeye7224]

I've lost count of all these 'next best thing in batteries' articles and have yet to see ONE come to market/fruition. I'll not be holding my breath (again).

[@Tore_Lund]

Despite their higher reliability a short in a capacitor, does not make a fire, but a bang. So potentially having KWh of energy stored that can be released in less than a mS can be spectacular.

[@danielmadar9938]

Thanks

[@johnmoss7227]

Capacitors are the one of the main reasons that electronics stop working. Decades repairing electronic units taught me that one of the first things one does after checking the obvious - is it plugged in? - is check all the electrolytic capacitors. The new 'super capacitors' have been used to replace the 12 volt battery in cars for many years as they tick all the boxes and do not pose so much of an environmental risk. I have just had to replace my 65" television because a capacitor blew in the HDMI circuit of my Virgin Tivo box which took out not only the Tivo but my TV as well. Only the red channel got through for a time - until it failed too. In an EV, I imagine that super capacitors might look tempting but just as the electrolyte in EV batterys has a shelf life, it is the same for capacitors.

[@rogerphelps9939]

No 12 volt car bateries have been replaced by supercapacitors. Their energy density is far too low.

[@mrjonlor]

With these things, I’m a big fan of the “I’ll believe it when I see it in a production vehicle” principle, but this would be awesome.

[@theunknownunknowns5168]

It takes me less than one minute to charge per week. In my old fossil it took 10 to 30 minutes depending if I had to go out to full up.

[@billbynum2210]

Graphene, nanotubes, lithium, semiconductor batteries... can't wait!!

[@zotter2542]

Awesome!

[@Decarbonize11]

This won’t speed charging battery-powered cars, because the bottleneck would be going from the capacitor to the battery. You could get a quick charge of as much as the capacitors would hold, but not a full charge.

[@Kapalek84]

With such high power, the copper tapes that these new compositions will be deposited on inside the capacitor might be heating up a lot, also regen breaking is already quite efficient however these caps could eliminate all regen losses due to capacitors charge discharge cycles(hybrid cars already have a massive capacitor inside their inverters for regen braking...) . These caps might just be a very good option for standard electronic devices as well so this is generally a very interesting news. Cheers!

[@cristerhelin8532]

I think it is needed to point out that to get a lot of electric energy stored in capacitors and batteries in a very short time, you need to have a source that can provide this energy. To be able to store 100 kWh in lets say 3 minutes we are talking about more than 2 MW (energy losses not included). It means that if we have an EV with a 400 V system we will need to have at least 5 kA current. If we also consider most battery technologies charging charateristics, we will possibly need 10 kA initially in the charging process.

[@arnaldorentes5371]

Whether this is the present case or not, the solution to the EV charging time problem really seems to lie in the capacitors. Thanks, Dave!

[@snoopaka]

Another good one to follow up on then. Sounds promising.

[@malbrownie]

I have a public EV charge point behind my office in Australia that allows charging for a donation. However, patronage is decreasing. I think this is due to newer cars having better batteries and longer ranges. People charge at home and don't need to top up as much as they did in the early days of Nissan Leafs etc. The time to charge may not be as important as it once was. The Electric Viking is talking about the new CATL battery that has a range of 1,000 KM (or miles ?). This also reduces the need to worry about charge times.

[@prawnmikus]

Even if the I²R losses in the charger were overcome, the pack wouldn't charge much faster if the caps are only used to absorb or dispense a kWh or two. After that it's back to the regular battery. If course, if the batteries can actually charge at a ~10 C rate, then running the charger at very high voltage (to lower current) and splitting the pack into many zones might get around an elephant trunk of a charging cable. Hopefully suitable superconductors will be here within a couple of decades and components will be smaller and more efficient.

[@patrickbeck4062]

With an energy density of 8.8W/h per kg I don't see how these are supposed to make any noticeable difference to charge times without making the capacitor as heavy as the rest of the car.

[@Octamed]

Similar to later harddrives that had 64MB of ram in them for rapid small operations.

[@YourOwnange]

What immediately raises a red flag is how extremely explosive large capacitors are. Even if that worked, you'd be driving a bomb.

[@bzuidgeest]

No worse than driving on hydrogen or even gasoline. Caps don't just explode. You have to seriously mistreat them for that to happen. Properly designed they would vent long before they go bang and you would see that in your monitoring of the "battery".

[@JeffBilkins]

I suppose that relates to how fast they can release their charge in regular operation?

[@oasntet]

Batteries are far, far more dangerous than capacitors.

[@bzuidgeest]

@@oasntet that depends entirely on the chemistry used.

[@ravenx447]

Brilliant explanation, I think 🤔👍🏼👊🏻

[@steverobbins4872]

If capacitors are ever going to be preferred over batteries for any EV, it would be in a mail truck. Think of it: a mail truck making deliveries in a suburban neighborhood travels only a few miles per day, but makes hundreds of stops. So the range can be very small, as long as the regenerative braking is really efficient. And I believe -- but I[m not sure -- that recharging a supercap is more efficient than recharging a battery.

[@JVR2019]

Capacitors in conjunction with batteries are the most optimal solution for sure. For even a very basic example; I have an annoying engine stop-start system on my 2.5-liter petrol powered car with a lead acid battery (originally). I've added a bank of ultra capacitors in parallel with the lead-acid battery to prevent a short battery life from being given many doses of hundred-amps draws during these auto engine shutoff-start cycles. I think I could extract a decade out of these batteries vs what would have otherwise laster under five. Less waste and resources being used that way I reckon or at least that's the hope.

[@foobar6846]

This makes no sense at all. You're trying to protect the battery against the one thing they're designed to do really well (short bursts of high amps, shallow cycling), so you've effectively just added another thing that can fail. What kills lead acid car batteries is deep cycling, which can happen for a ton of different reasons. Your battery is going to fail at some point, but the auto stop/start function of your car isn't going to be it.

[@IanClarke-fs7vg]

I had one of these stop start cars. The battery died in two years and was twice the cost of a normal battery to replace. So the capacitors in parallel with the battery may be a good idea.

[@gregabbott8100]

Ways to increase efficiencies… Love it!

[@davidh9897]

I was considering the purchase of a EV . My county is 168 .iles in length with briges from island to island. The main electric power transmission line comes from the mainland. We down have roof top Solar Panels production of electric and hot water. I recorded the time to fill 1/2 tank of fuel for my 4cylinder pickup which i drive 110 miles per day. 3min./14secs. We have 7 EV chargers in the entire county. I have seen EV's parked along the side of a bridge and roadway. Ready to be towed.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

About 15 years ago, there was substantial buzz about EEStor, who were making extravagant claims about what was essentially supposed to be a huge breakthrough in ultracapacitors. Alas, it appears to have been a mirage. But I don't know that what they were claiming isn't theoretically possible.

[@psylinx]

The company that I am invested in “AMPX” going to change this to some degree. Their battery is about 40% more lithium-ion cells. They start full-scale production next year. George Davis

[@RonLWilson]

Interesting!

[@PaulSinnema]

Sounds like a long shot to me Dave.

[@scribblescrabble3185]

0:35 ahahaha, that face says it all.

[@maxhugen]

One thing that does not seem to get discussed is the issue of providing the enormous demand on the electricity grid required to charge EVs, and the significant drop in individual charging rates at a charging station when many EVs try to charge at the same time.

[@marketingmark9992]

When the technology becomes commercial it will take off, people will charge their EVs at points that offer the fast charging and the car with the battery that alows for a fast charge

[@robdeboer7038]

Sounds good

[@philrabe910]

5:15... Hello- I was listening to you as I typed something elsewhere, heard this and I think my ears glazed over.

[@colinross6259]

Probably not the Holy Grail, another small step in the right direction.

[@rovert1284]

What rarely is mentioned that if you want to recharge a large battery (or capacitor) you need a very good power supply. We are years away from having anywhere near the capacity if EVs were the norm. Already we have charge rates reducing when an additional EV plugs into the charger. I thought I might be into an EV in 5 years (4.5 now) but thinking longer than that now.

[@rifleman42051]

The Evolution in Lithium batteries will need to take place. Integrating Super Graphene Capacitors with Lithium will allow you to charge within 5-10 minute window. This type of tech will take time to develop and perfect!

[@tomreingold4024]

Thank you for alerting to this and to other emerging or promising technologies. I realize they won't all come to fruition, but some of them might.

[@user990077]

At my age I'm more worried about the capacity of my belly which seems to increase a little year by year.

[@TheGezm2008]

When Musk purchased Maxwell Capacitors I thought there could be something to look out for

[@bicyclemanNL]

I have uses a 'Silineco' scooter - Three modes... Eco mode (max 30kmh/hr150 klm range.. range, city, mode max 40klm/hr 125klm range... sprorts mode is 50klm/hr and 100klm rang) In sports modeI I release the throttle and regen-braking kicks in automatically - I found I can ride 10-15 klm, leave it sitting a while and having a chat - say 20mins?, and It's gained up to 7-12%.. often around the higher values. Makes a difference that so very many bicycle lanes are Scooter friendly (in NL) - meaning avoiding traffic lights. Meeting traffic lights that are sensitive to the scooter approaching (about 99% of them if not all), which means in low traffic situations it's green as you approach... absolute pleasure to glide along in silence - it is a heavy beast but has a reverse button so it saves my nearly 68 year old knees from the aches and pains Anyway, highly recommended - and long live the capacitors

[@LucasBustamante1]

That's super interesting. EVs could be a mix of traditional LFP~ battery for day-to-day use, along with super fast charging (and more dense) batteries that "give you 50km autonomy in 60 seconds of charge"

[@tomsixsix]

The big issue with being able to rapid charge a vehicle this fast is power delivery. If you want to charge an EV up as quickly as a petrol car (say 500 miles range in 3 minutes) then you need some extraordinary rate of power. For an average EV, around 2.5MW. That is around the power installation capacity for a 20-car supercharging station (most of them are designed with less power per stall if all are occupied.) But only for one car! So if you want 10 spots, that's 25MVA+ capacity. It is enough effort getting 2.5MVA to a rapid charging station and difficulty in getting power to sites is one of the things holding back the deployment of rapid charging stations. The reality is EVs will likely charge a little slower than fuel cars refuel but you start every day at 100% and can go 200+ miles without stopping, for most people that's good enough.

[@marcozorzi6770]

Thank you David, Ferrari is working on super capacitors for fast charging. Definitely an exciting topic to keep an eye on for innovation and future developments.

[@thomasbeach7436]

Every step forward helps in the fight against climate change. Thanks for the vid!

[@matyk985]

good for them, what does it mean tho. love that

[@geoffreykail9129]

"IF" as always this proves out. It is these kind of adjacent technologies that will improve, from the outside , our batteries and help us move forward in our goal of reducing or eliminating our fossil fuel use. Thank you for your regular and continuing reporting the developments.

[@Phtang-phtang]

Capacitors are often the component that will cause failure on a circuit board. So longevity isn’t something you can rely on. They would need to look at that

[@malavoy1]

It depends on the current state of the art in the geometry of the plates. Last time I looked they've been trying to change the geometry of the plates by, for example, making them spiky so as to increase the surface area of the plates without increasing the overall size of the capacitor. Energy storage is proportional to the capacitor plate surface area, so if they can drastically increase that without increasing the size of the overall capacitor, they will be able to store more energy in the same size package. Improvements in dielectric then help extend that. Haven't heard where they're at lately in the geometry research, as that will determine the next step which is how to actually manufacture them (without the spikes shorting out).

[@JRP3]

The ridiculously poor energy density means these have no place in an EV. You'd need a physically large and heavy bank of these in an EV to absorb enough charge to then pass on to the battery pack at a lower rate, it makes zero sense.

[@orpheuscreativeco9236]

I may be incorrect here, but I'm fairly certain that I've seen super capacitors with higher energy density. Based on the high-precision needed to manufacture this "breakthrough" tech, I can't imagine that the cost would outweigh the density and charge claims. This is another case of efficiency versus affordability. That's not to say that these wouldn't have their place, they just won't become as universal as something close in performance but cheaper. Thanks for sharing this research! ✌️

[@xxwookey]

191 joules/cm3 is 53Wh/l. Amazing for a capacitor but pretty crummy for an EV battery

[@mikewallace8087]

You must be friends with the Electric Viking , an agent for the Firecracker country.

[@cratecruncher4974]

The ability to fast charge anywhere on the interstate is what will get people to leave their ICE vehicles for good. We should have the new national electric grid overlay the Interstate highway system so the trucks get all the juice they need. Got to get the stuff to the people. Four wheelers full of kids need to see grandma, today!

[@AmosS]

What I miss about this development is that, as far as I followed, the capacitor is still just a "buffer" between the charger and the battery. It can take power x19 faster from the charger but the battery still needs to pull the power from the capacitor fast enough or else all you get is a small-capacity capacitor filled up for a few seconds then it still has to drip-feed it into the battery, no? What am I missing?

[@patrickbeck4062]

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me. With such a low energy density, it won't make any sense to have more than a couple of hundred watt hours of storage at most. So you can charge that couple of hundred watt hours pretty quick (like 3 seconds or so), but then you're just back to charging the battery as normal. It will probably only save a few seconds over the whole fast charge.

[@JohnnyBelgium]

We could make electric cars until the resources run out or just create a carfree infrastructure. The laws of physics don't compromise.

[@TehPwnerer]

The idea of personal two ton transportation vehicles was the bad one from the start. Think again society