Inefficiencies and durability questions cropping up with now-proliferating stop/start systems could be opening the door for long-promising, but little applied ultracapacitor technology in the light-vehicle market.
Ultracaps, long considered too costly for widespread employment in light vehicles, appear to be gaining traction – albeit ever so slowly – as electrification takes hold and automakers find the technology’s advantages harder to resist, leading supplier Maxwell Technologies contends.
Mikael Setterberg, manager and lead engineer-Engine Starting Group for the San Diego-based supplier, says disappointing battery performance and durability in burgeoning stop/start applications, including with more-sophisticated, advanced-glass-mat (AGM) lead-acid batteries, is leading automakers to take a closer look at UCs.
"You have to change an AGM every 1.5 to two years,” Setterberg says, suggesting an ultracap paired with a lower-cost conventional lead-acid battery can last 10 years/100,000 miles (162,000 km) in stop/start applications.
Even the Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium, which has been solidly behind the AGM movement, is acknowledging a potential future built around a combination conventional battery and ultracapacitor. Its website touts development of the “Ultrabattery,” which would incorporate a carbon supercapacitor electrodeA solid electric conductor through which an electric current enters or leaves in a medium to extend battery life and challenge the performance of more expensive nickel-metal-hydride and lithium-ion batteries.
