Weight Savings Idea: BoostCap + Solar Panel vs Battery
 

I just stumbled across this video (about to leave the office, so wanted to post this while I have the link handy).

Really interesting. Some guy replaced his battery with some capacitors, and has been running his car with them in lieu of a standard car battery. I thought that was an awesome idea, but got to thinking about the voltage leak issue that's more prevalent with capacitors. What do you think would be required to wire in a solar panel to trickle charge the capacitors, as a sort of safe-guard against voltage leakage? I really like his idea, and of course I know our batteries are already smaller than other vehicles, but I thought this would be a very neat (and somewhat cheap) idea to try. Granted, I know you'll only save ~20lbs-ish, but I like they say, "For science!"

The video:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3x_kYq3mHM"]Replace your car battery with capacitors! 12V BoostPack Update - YouTube[/ame]

Thoughts?

Anything that provides enough voltage for the starter will do the trick, you can also rig up a set of rechargeable batteries to start your car but it doesn't mean its a good idea. The biggest problem here is reliability and extreme weather and temperature cycles the batteries have to withstand. Another thing is safety, failure of a fully charged capacitor is a very dangerous fire hazard. My advice, leave the engineering to the professionals.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMd6_pPNg9M"]Capacitor Failure - YouTube[/ame]

Professional engineer here. My advice, leave the engineering to the car enthusiast.

Jokes aside, supercapacitors and ultracapacitors perform very well at extreme temperatures, especially compared to your standard lead-acid batteries. I can't speak to other aspects of their performance, but I'd be interested to see someone (safely) do this.

For a more expensive but ostensibly safer option, someone in another thread was looking at swapping the standard battery out with a lithium-ion one, also used in the TRD Griffon.

Unfortunately not all car enthusiasts are engineers ;)
I do agree there are tons of battery options out there to replace the ancient lead-acid battery, I would be very interested to see a high performance battery using supercapacitors or Li-ion but it has to be well designed and tested. The home made proto-type held together by zip ties shown in the video definitely does not belong in our cars.

Well, I don't know if I completely agree. I for one am a huge advocate for proof-of-concepts. Not saying that arent any inherent risks involved, but that's part of what makes the modding community fun.

I'm sure the guy in the video would love to prototype with high-quality materials (I think a "cell"-rig could be made pretty easily on a 3D printer), and his subsequent projects have seen a definite improvement in fit-and-finish (his first was larger capacitor rig made out of wood, next was nicer looking plastic setup, followed by this project with smaller caps).

But I do think you're right about the possibility for a risk of fire damage, should a capacitor fail catastrophically. If I were to try a project like this, I'd probably at least invest in one of those $5 marine battery enclosures made out of plastic. That way you'd at least have SOMETHING to catch errant sparks and whatnot.

Anyways, I'm not recommending anyone go out and try to build one, just posted the video to stir the thoughts of the collective!

Beyond the fire risk the personal risk of electrocution from large capacitors is very real. They could easily provide enough current to kill you if not handled/discharged properly. Capacitors are potentially much more dangerous then regular batteries.

Lightweight batteries have been increasingly popular in motorcycles for weight savings. I can't rememeber any brands off the top of my head, but newer lithium chemistries (such as Li-Fe) are surprisigly safe (enough to put a drill through them at full charge with barely a puff of smoke) and can hold a charge over long storage periods and temp ranges.

That's a very good point. After a cursory google search, I wonder how hard it'd be to implement a discharge device like this inside the enclosure to completely mitigate that aspect?

Definitely looking forward to future battery technologies, but like anything, I imagine it'll be prohibitively expensive to play with and something you wont see on "economy" vehicles for a long time.

You can also just buy a probe for discharging them, but you still need to have the sense to do the discharge process before working on them. Like most things they can be handled safely, but there is a greater risk and additional precautions that need to be taken.

Damn these things are not cheap... Hopefully in a couple of years the rise of EVs will drive the price of lithium-ion batteries down.
http://www.jegs.com/p//Lithium-Pros-...70167/10002/-1

I didn't mean to discourage any enthusiasts tinkering with their own projects, I just wanted to point out the possible dangers of tinkering with high density batteries. Having a test car would be a much better idea. I hate to see anyone accidentally burn up their new car.

Hello friend bit old thread but which idea have you adopted? I hope you will have some useful information to share..