Super Cap Car?

Fender bender = sparks flying. Time to bone up on short circuit calculations.

Maybe one day super-capacitors will be a consistent part of hybrid or fully electric vehicles. I like the dual purpose concept of body panel parts being the capacitor. There will be the obvious concern of a partial or fully charged capacitor involved in an accident that has to be mitigated.

Super cap driving suit..optional colors availible

At least this will provide ready fibrillation to those whose hearts stop due to the shock of the collision and the stress over how much it will cost to repair. Why not use the supercaps elsewhere, like stationary power, and make synthetic clean fuels in a renewable way (that technology is almost mature, with almost daily strides being made)?

Maybe the supercap people are thinking of thse cars being on a controlled roadway where the vehicles are completely autonomous, and no "accidents" will happen. I find that ambitious, but still rubbish! Wait until the first deer runs out onto the road, or kangaroo.

Why not? After all, supercap buses are here already, Mildred.

Since capacitors have very high acceptance rates they are ideal for regenerative braking where storage acceptance is a primary defining variable in regenerative efficiency.

Future power processing may include trip cycle power averaging as well as regenerative braking. This method of power processing allows the max prime mover power to be reduced (read - reduced mass and volume fractions for the prime mover) to that required to support the designed maximum sustained speed on level terrain.

In such a power processing method the total energy storage capacity of the storage unit need only be equal to the kinetic energy of the vehicle at maximum sustained speed. Accelerative and grading performance would increase as energy storage capacity increases.

The hybridization of capacitors with chemical, mechanical, and hydraulic storage will enable a wide variety of transportation technologies; from human powered hybrid electric bicycles to switching locomotives.

I believe it highly probable that "The Three Fundamental Efficiencies of Hybrid Technology" will be applied to a variety of transportation processes.

http://www.bestsyndication.com/Articles/2006/c/carter_mark/031206_hybrid_cars.htm

Not likely!, get a bump, bump a wall, even get hit by a stone thrown up by someone's tyre and it is instant immolation!!! The energy required is way too much to be stored safely in the panels.... how many Teslas have gone up in smoke because a piece of metal was flicked up off the road and pierced the battery bay! Supercaps or batteries built into the panels would be much more vulnerable and to be any use they would have to have a MUCH higher energy density than the batteries in use today. That sort of energy density combined with the vulnerability would be EXTREMELY dangerous and a recipe for disaster - not just for the driver and passengers but also for anyone close by!!

funny you feel so strongly about research being done in your country

Wouldn't that depend on the operating voltage?

"Instant immolation?" -

Perhaps a review of the Maxwell Super Cap data-sheets and a little arithmetic might temper your animosity towards this coming applied technology?

I believe there's a reason that the battery is located where it is, inside the Engine Compartment and, not other locations like on the bumper, on top of the hood, or inside the passenger compartment.

That reason is SAFETY. The battery (and supercaps, when used) is a vulnerable piece of equipment that needs to be protected from damage. The reason it's not in the passenger compartment (which is safer than the engine compartment) is because passenger safety trumps component safety.

You do not use delicate components as part of the body of the car, the outer shell is expected to be the 'armor' of the vehicle, taking the hits, dings dents and major impacts so the 'attacks' do not proceed further inside and hurt the passengers or cause the delicate parts to explode and/or catch fire.

I think that you and others have missed my point about mitigating this risk. IF (and this is a very big if) sheet metal thickness super capacitors can be constructed so they safely self discharge when pieced, crumpled, shredded, bent, overheated and all of the other ugly things that happen during a fender bender then actively using this region of a vehicle that was previously just a crumple and marketing zone sounds like a good idea to me. For all I know the energy stored in this sheet metal might serve the same function as the explosives found in ablation armor.

My point is that this is such an obvious potential risk that it has to be mitigated somehow. The very first vehicle crash test will prove this.

at least some here can see the forest through the trees

Okay, let us assume that the supercaps can safely discharge when damaged. (I'm not sure I like the idea of 'ablation armor' on cars. That might help reduce the penetration of a stray golf ball, but to have enough force to even partially deflect another vehicle, your own vehicle would be taking additional damage from the 'protective explosion.' And what if it goes off while pedestrians are nearby? But I digress.)

We're going with the premise that a damaged supercap will safely discharge, as if the energy could vanish like a soap bubble. Now let us look at a typical 'fender bender' in city driving, the door damage. Doors take a lot of abuse, occasionally they get torn off completely if opened while not paying attention to the passing traffic, but more likely they get bashed in from people 'lurching out' of street-side parking because they cannot see the trafic clearly. The Lurcher will either smash into a passing car he did not see, or 'jump right in front of' the passing car and be sideswiped himself. With current automotive technology, this is a couple thousand dollars to repair, and the vehicles are drivable, if now unsightly, and the damaged doors may be stuck shut. With supercaps in the doors, this same collision would mean that a significant portion of the electrical energy the vehicle needs is not gone, the cost of the repair is one-and-a-half to two times as much as the supercap needs to be extracted and replaced, and the damaged vehicle is likely 'dead in the water,' as the remaining supercaps cannot power the motor any more.

Supercaps in the doors make as much sense as putting fuel tanks in the doors. Planes can get away with inside-the-wing fuel tanks because A) Jet fuel is little more than very clean diesel fuel, which does not ignite easily under normal air pressure and temperatures. (Mythbusters proved this while doing research on the 'light the gasoline trail to blow up the car with the leaky gas tank' movie myth.), B) the wings are designed to separate from the plane in an impact that could 'spark up' the jet fuel (Which is why the 9/11 attack on the pentagon looked like a giant train had hit the building, the wings snapped off on hitting a mere stone wall), C) there are SO MANY safety interlocks and valves to try and keep the fuel from spilling even if the wing do shear off, and D) If a plane takes damage and loses a wing, the loss of fuel/power does not matter for it's continued use afterwards, as it is heading for its Final Landing, and it's one remaining job is to try and protect as many occupants as possible.

Cars need to protect their drive system, as most collisions are not 'total loss,' and the more that can be done to keep the vehicle drivable after the collision, the better.