Is the Super Battery Closer Than We Think?

When we last left the issue of "super batteries" based on capacitors (in June 2006), they were mired in "research" at MIT, but researchers were hopeful to have commercial products out by the end of the decade. Good news: A "secretive" Texas startup has taken the technology and is running with it, with the goal of bringing it to market by the end of the year.

The catch: Not in a laptop, but in an electric car. EEStor is gearing up to sell its "barium-titanate powder" capacitor/battery hybrid to vehicle manufacturers (including ZENN cars, pictured), which currently rely on lead-acid batteries for power. In Technology Review's coverage of the technology, it notes: "Pound for pound, [the battery] will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals, according to the company." The company also says the batteries recharge much faster and should not degrade significantly over time.

Is this all too good to be true? I'm not going to pretend I understand all the intricacies of ultra-capacitor design, but on paper the product looks legitimate. Until now, capacitors have never been designed that can provide such high levels of power, but the barium-titanate insulator is said to be able to allow the massive jump in voltage required for such an application. The company says its first production-class product will offer 15 kilowatt-hours to an electric car with a 200-mile driving range. The upshot: $9 of electricity could take you 500 miles (vs. $60 of gasoline).

Naturally there are many questions left to be answered, namely how well any of this works in the real world, and what might happen when your 3,500-volt car smashes into another 3,500-volt car at 75 mph. Detractors have also claimed that the technology EEStor is touting is impossible to create thanks to the laws of physics. Nor is there any roadmap for this technology coming to portable devices like laptops and cell phones, though it's included in the patent.

Meanwhile, if you want to see what a ZENN Car might look like, check out ZENN's site at zenncars.com.