Has the supercapacitor era arrived?

[madfast]

Toyota's TS030 Le mans car uses a supercapacitor based hybrid system and it looked great in the early hours of the race. it even took the lead for a very brief moment. there are also reports that F1 teams like red bull are using supercapacitors in their KERS system. the implications of this tech are obvious. consider that in the patent applications for ferrari's hybrid system, there is already mention of supercapacitors in addition to a conventional battery pack.

before we know it, there will be performance hybrids out there using a small li-ion battery with a supercapacitor...

[blur]

Sounds like next-gen NSX and Supra tech... 4wd hybrids I would not mind driving.

[serialk11r]

I did check on what supercapacitors average joe has access to, and they're not really that great (crap energy density). The 20kJ/kg stuff wikipedia lists or whatever is definitely not something you can just buy off Ebay right now.

However, I did find that some companies are successfully producing Lithium doped supercapacitors that have NiMH battery competitive energy density (obviously with far far greater power density), so it's possible we'll see OEM use of these in the near future.