What are the advantages of supercapacitors?

Supercapacitors already exist in cars with regenerative braking systems. This is thanks to their greater power density than chemical reaction-based batteries, which allows them to rapidly store and discharge electricity, handy for collecting energy generated under braking then quickly releasing it upon acceleration.

Full cell-based cars, like the Toyota FCHV, also use supercapacitors to deliver auxiliary accelerative power that hydrogen fuel-cells struggle to do alone.

They’ve yet to take over from lithium-ion batteries as the primary power source, but electric and hybrid vehicles are advancing year on year, so there’s a lot of potential for supercapacitors to play a bigger role in next-generation electric cars and charging infrastructure to support them.

As supercapacitors pretty much rely on physics rather than chemistry to store their energy, they don’t degrade in the same fashion as lithium-ion batteries. That could present a huge opportunity in improving the lifespan of an electric car, as well as reducing the environmental impact of using lithium-ion power cells.

But the largest advantage of supercapacitors over lithium-ion and nickel cadmium batteries is their ability to charge and discharge rapidly; we’re talking charging in minutes rather than hours. So supercapacitors could be the panacea to reduce the hours it currently takes to recharge an all-electric car – or offer a boost of speed to hybrids, something we’ll explain later in this article.

Supercapacitors also handle wireless charging very well, which when combined with their ability to charge at speed, could remove the need to plug EVs into powerpoints and make charging a more seamless process.