Capacitors are amazing little devices that litter your circuit boards storing and discharging small amounts of energy as needed. For quite a while, folks have been attempting to use the abilities of capacitors to store energy for use in larger power storage systems. In particular, it would be great if a lot of energy could be stored in a capacitor, and then slowly released to power a car. 

But, so far, this has been impractical.  First, because of the size of the capacitor that would be needed, and second, because capacitors tend to want to release their charge all at once, not over 500 miles of driving.  Texas start-up EEStor, however, seems to have overcome many of these problems.  Ultracapacitors, capacitors that can store huge amounts of charge, and release it in a relatively controlled fashion, have already started showing up in hybrid cars, but EEStor seems to have taken this further. 

They claim to have an ultracapacitor that can store enough power to drive a car 500 miles.  Not only are ultracapacitors entirely free of toxic substances, they can be charged extremely quickly and never lose capacity. 

EEStor is already licensing the technology to Toronto based Feel Good Cars and they should be on the road by 2008. Soon after, we could see them in larger vehicles, as well as portable electronic devices.

 

Via Business 2.0