Forget petrol & diesel, ultra capacitor is here!

What is new in automobile sector? The latest trends in automobile sector is ultra capacitor technology. If the experiments bear fruit, the day when you won’t need petrol engine and buy batteries is not far away.

Ian Clifford, a Toronto car-maker announced last month that it will build a car that could run 250 miles on a charge at a maximum speed of 80 miles per hour. And can recharge in just five minutes. The fuel costs could be one-tenth of today’s gas powered vehicle.

Clifford wants to start a global revolution by building a practical, everyday car with no gasoline engine, no batteries, and no emissions.

While big Detroit automakers ponder a future plug-in car that goes 40 miles on a battery charge before its gas engine kicks in, Clifford’s tiny ZENN Motor, a Toronto maker of low-speed electric cars, announced in March that it will build a new highway-speed (80 mph) model that goes 250 miles on a charge.

Having no batteries, the new ‘cityZENN’ model will use a breakthrough version of a common electrical storage device called an ultra capacitor to store power from a wall socket, the company says. Fuel costs to operate it would be about one-tenth of today’s gas-powered vehicle.

If that astounding claim is real (and there are many sceptics), it could revolutionise automotive travel by making all-electric cars competitive with gas-powered vehicles and easing the world's dependence on oil.

“The big problem has always been the battery and its limits,” says Clifford, ZENN’s founder and CEO.

“This new technology is a 180-degree shift that represents the end of fossil fuel as a transportation fuel.”

That’s because the same ultra capacitor technology could be used across the grid to provide cheap electric storage for wind and solar power, he says. In turn, this process could power millions of ultra capacitor vehicles with no emissions at all. With the cars’ fast-charge capability, recharging stations could pop up to help make even longer trips routine.

Ultra capacitors, also called super capacitors, are more powerful cousins of the basic capacitor. With activated carbon at their core to act as a sponge for electrons, ultra capacitors can absorb power – or send a charge – far faster than batteries. They are also far more durable.

First used in the 1960s, ultra capacitors today are widely found in electronic devices such as computers. In cameras, they retract and expand zoom lens. Yet the power stored by today’s ultra capacitors is still only about 5 per cent as much as a modern lithium-ion battery, far too little to power a car by themselves.

The reported breakthrough was made by ZENN’s business partner EEStor, a Cedar Park, Texas, firm headed by respected computer industry veteran Richard Weir, who’s named on the company’s patent. The company is now nearing commercial production of its new “electrical energy storage unit” or EESU.

But privately held EEStor has had little to say publicly or to the press – and that secretiveness has inspired incredulity among many debating the topic on Internet forums.

Much of the rampant skepticism were over whether or not EEStor has had a breakthrough in automotive propulsion stems from the company’s reticence to speak or to demonstrate its product publicly.