Why aren’t ultracapacitors used more often as range extenders in Hybrids?

Question

Seems like AFS Trinity tried it 24 years ago and nothing has been released so far that makes use of the concept.

Is there something like a combustion engine running at a sweetspot to charge ultracapacitors with a buffer battery (something like the UltraBattery concept)?

I’ve recently read about the Nissan Range-Extender concept but milage still is quite bad.

In: 1

Answer 1

Ultracapacitors are terrible at storing large amounts of energy, compared to batteries.

They’re very good at charging/discharging quickly, and going through lots of cycles, but at best they can only hold something like 1/300 to 1/1000 of the energy that an equal weight lithium battery can.

Range extension requires storing a lot of energy…batteries are reasonable for that. Hydrocarbons are extremely good. Capacitors are awful.