Comments on: Sinautec Makes Ultracapacitors Work

By: turidani

turidani — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 04:00:08 +0000

Well, it is funny, that even the first "pure ultracapacitor bus" in 2006 in Shanghai must have been a "hybrid (ultracapacitor plus battery) solution, as it specified 5-10 minutes of charging time at the end stations, which is totally meaningless for UCs.

The concept of UC bus is quite O.K.
But it seems, that they couldn't deliver the promised power density, so now they had to mess with the performance data.

It is obvious, that they didn't achieve their original goals. Othervise, they would told all the relevant performance details - like total passenger capacity, which is still unknown.

You can easily tell just from the datasheet, when somebody is cheating.

If you don't have to lie, then you will proudly tell every details.

But if you have to lie, then your datasheet become a puzzle.

By: turidani

turidani — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:00:08 +0000

By: Car Engines

Car Engines — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:31:28 +0000

the clean bus run with electricity , there will be no pollution .
thanks

By: Tony

Tony — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 05:24:40 +0000

The bus above doesn’t have to have overhead wires above its entire track, unlike trolley buses.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:30:05 +0000

45 miles does seem like a long way on capacitors, but busses have a lot of space under the passenger area, so it’s conceivable that they might be able to go that far on capacitors alone despite the lower storage density. Conceivable, but I agree this aspect calls for further enlightenment.

The advantage over electric trolleys is infrastructure. The bus is not tethered to an electric line and can go anywhere. Put a charger above every bus station that has access to power and the busses can run indefinitely from the mini-charges they get at each stop.

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:23:22 +0000

Brent, right — this is a hybrid, ultracaps and batteries. They also make a full ultracap version with a range of 3.5 miles (air conditioning running 100% of the time) to 5.5 miles (air conditioning off 100% of the time.) That one has 5.9 KHW of ultracaps, and average power consumption of 1.5 KWH/mile.

For a bus, this is fine. For anything else, well, at least not yet. Though where I live, a small town in Montana, a three mile range per *day* would be fine for a personal vehicle.

Bob, running wires all over is expensive. It also restricts the vehicle to a very specific route. Charging at the bus stops only eliminates both of those problems. Another issue is, as you must be familiar, that you will remember the sparking at night, and the smell of ozone, right? This is because it is difficult to maintain 100% contact with the wires. When contact is in the process of being lost, power is also lost through poor connections, which both wear the conductors and pickups, and stress the motor components. As this bus isn’t moving when it charges, these problems don’t apply either.

By: Bob Dobbs

Bob Dobbs — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:04:08 +0000

I spent many years in San Francisco riding electric “trolley buses” powered by overhead wires above the street. How is this system clearly superior to that decades-old tech?

By: Brent

Brent — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:13:27 +0000

>>The model displayed could travel up to 45 miles between charges thanks to an energy capacity advancement.<<

I assume this was a bus that was equipped with capacitors AND batteries. There is no way a bus can travel 45 miles on a capacitor charge alone.