4 ms·

For a capacitor to be used in charging that way it would have to have something like the same capacity as the car's battery. Supercapacitors tend to have lower

For a capacitor to be used in charging that way it would have to have something like the same capacity as the car's battery. Supercapacitors tend to have lower specific energy density than batteries I was under the misapprehension that they had a much larger energy density. However, my next thought is that not all charging is the same. Only the 1st 60% of a charge is in the constant current part of the charge curve. After that, the charge rate falls off. Charging the last 10% of a battery's capacity takes much longer. What if the supercapacitor bank had about 10% of the capacity of the battery? That would still be a large increase in the size and weight taken up by energy storage, though. It looks like just putting more batteries in the car is the economical thing to do.

hinkley 8y ago
You could go other ways and downsize the battery a little bit, or tweak the definition of 100% and 0% (they play with those to keep the batteries from damaging themselves.)
Symmetry 8y ago
In general capacitors have much higher power density but much lower energy densities than batteries and supercapacitors are somewhere in between. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph240/aslani1/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph240/aslani1/ Using a capacitor for the last 10% might make sense, or it might not. It's all about the specific numbers. It might be that a larger battery charged up to 90% might be better than a slightly smaller battery charged to 100% with the assistance of a capacitor. If you're adding a capacitor for power reasons anyways this might be a way to get more use out of it.