Application of supercapacitors in the field of electric vehicles

Supercapacitor is a promising energy storage device between traditional capacitors and secondary batteries. It is an ideal power source for electric vehicles due to their high specific power, long cycle life, short charge and discharge time and wide temperature range. At the same time, supercapacitors can also have broad application prospects in the fields of renewable energy power generation, information communication, aerospace and other fields.

In the development of electric vehicle technology, people have been developing high-power density and high-energy density supercapacitors as part of the hybrid system of electric vehicles. Supercapacitors can be used to meet the high power requirements of the car during start-up, acceleration, and hill climbing to protect against high load loads on the battery system. Therefore, with the development of green electric vehicle technology, the research of supercapacitors has entered a new era of vigorous development.

Supercapacitors are used in combination with lithium-ion batteries or fuel cells to meet the high power requirements of electric vehicles during start-up, acceleration and hill climbing, and to extend the cycle life of batteries to optimize the performance of electric vehicle power systems. At present, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Russia all regard the supercapacitor project as a national key research and development project, and successfully applied in rail transit, fuel cell vehicles and hybrid vehicles, in fuel economy and environmental protection. The aspect has achieved obvious results. South Korea's Nesscap Supercapacitor Company has partnered with world-class rail vehicle manufacturer CAF to apply supercapacitors to rail locomotives in major Spanish cities. Supercapacitors can help reduce energy consumption by 30% by storing the energy generated by braking or locomotive acceleration. Japan's Guimigong began selling Mazda's supercapacitor modules equipped with the energy regeneration system "i-ELOOP".

Supercapacitors have also been included in the National Medium- and Long-Term Plan for Science and Technology Development (2006~2020) and become one of the most important cutting-edge technologies in the long-term development of the country. The supercapacitor bus developed by Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Co., Ltd. was successfully operated at the Shanghai World Expo. The energy recovery efficiency is 20%~40%, and the energy consumption cost is 1/3 of that of ordinary fuel vehicles. At present, the key problem in limiting the application of supercapacitors is that the energy density of supercapacitors is low, especially in high-power, high-current operation, the energy density is usually rapidly degraded, and it is difficult to meet the urgent need for electric vehicles for high-power/high-energy-density power batteries.

Edited by Suzhou Yacoo Science Co., Ltd.