Second, supercapacitors could also save some wear and tear on the batteries during rapid acceleration and regenerative charging.
Second, supercapacitors could also save some wear and tear on the batteries during rapid acceleration and regenerative charging.
A capacitor much smaller than the batteries acting as a buffer for rapid acceleration and braking might make sense, though.
The use which might make sense is to use the capacitors to supplement the grid supplied power during the initial fast charge phase, then in the slower final charging phases or idle time recharge the capacitors from the grid for the next customer. This levels out the demands on the grid and can result in a lower electricity rate from the power company.
It all depends on the constants if it makes sense. Or maybe it doesn't make sense and Tesla needed something out of Maxwell's patent portfolio.
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.
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.
What would be an interesting use of this idea would be to have 10% capacity onboard in capacitors. Once you get within 10% of the desired charge level in the batteries, you quickly charge the capacitors, which then trickles into the battery over time.
This might allow you to increase the overall charge rate for the car which would help reduce wait times at Superchargers.
If you're not going to be using the high power of a supercapacitor, there's zero reason to pay a premium.
The idea here is to leverage their incredibly fast rate of charge and short term nature to reduce time spent Supercharging. Very roughly speaking, you can charge from 0-90% in an hour, but to go from 90-100% can take almost another hour.
If you could get the car to 90% and then very rapidly charge the capacitors with the remaining 10% that trickles in, you get the car off the charger faster. In theory you could almost double the number of cars you could serve at that station.
If supercapacitors have any role, it’s at EV charge stations to reduce demand charges from utilities. VW just agreed to buy a whole lot of Tesla batteries for this purpose at their Electrify America charge stations. Space is not an issue, as you can bury your storage under the charger stalls.
Especially here I'd expect batteries to win out as transfer capacity is roughly proportional to storage capacity with batteries.
EDIT: The above comment was meant about supercharging, not regenerative braking.
You could preferentially store the regenerative braking energy into the ultracapacitors (and discharge from them from a stop, instead of the main battery). You're not talking a huge number of them (order of magnitude of ~100) for a cycle brake cycle at Model 3 mass, highway speed, and normal braking.
The UX would be invisible: If demand is greater than the supply available from the battery pack, drain some energy from the supercapacitors. If it's less, gradually shift some energy into them. If the driver is not in the vehicle, drain it all out, when they come back, recharge the supercaps.
The problem is that these capacitors and transfers add cost money, space, weight, energy, and complexity.
Looking at some numbers, batteries are ~20x more energy dense in both volume and weight. Batteries have 1/10th the power density, but efficiency drops significantly with discharge rate and they have fewer lifetime charge cycles and poorer temperature response. Batteries also have much, much lower self-discharge, and cost a lot less per kilowatt-hour.
Right now, lithium-ion batteries are simply good enough and supercapacitors are not that much better, so it's the cost-benefit analysis says it's better to take the costs you would have spent on supercaps and just put in a few more batteries.
That balance could shift, though, with improvements in supercap technology, or - paradoxically - with improvements in battery chemistry. If a battery with much better energy density and/or lower cost was found, with a reduced discharge rate that was sufficient to cruise but insufficient to accelerate or do regenerative braking, you could add supercaps to make a vehicle based on that battery feasible. It's similar to the electric grid - the base load would be handled by the slow batteries, similar to coal or nuclear power plants, while peaking loads would be handled by the supercapacitors, like a gas turbine.
I admittedly haven't read up a ton on fast charging options but I also don't think I've seen super-capacitors mentioned as an intermediary source in any discussions. Given the article mentions Maxwell wanting to get into the automotive industry, a fast charging use is probably still a long ways out at this point.