Batteries and supercapacitors have their own pros and cons. In order to combine the strengths of both, engineers have tried to create a hybrid of the two -- a "super battery". The top priority for engineers is to capture the high energy density barrier, because once this challenge is addressed, superbatteries can replace high-cost, high-power supercapacitors for transport and natural power harvesting. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, announced in March 2013 the creation of a graphene-based micro-supercapacitor, a farad capacitor made with a carbon layer only one atom thick that charges and discharges faster than Standard batteries are hundreds or even thousands of times faster. The production of this supercapacitor module does not require sophisticated equipment, and an ordinary DVD recorder can complete the entire production process. The research team showed that using this technique, they used cheap materials to make more than 100 tiny super cells on a single disc in less than half an hour.

In the automotive industry, the application of the intelligent start-stop control system (light hybrid system) provides a broad stage for supercapacitors, especially in plug-in hybrid vehicles. Because the electric car starts and stops frequently, the discharge process of the battery changes greatly. During normal driving, the average power drawn by the electric sedan from the battery is fairly low, while the peaks when accelerating and climbing are quite high.

Under the existing technical conditions of electric car batteries, supercapacitor manufacturers must balance specific energy and specific power as well as specific power and cycle life, and it is difficult to pursue high specific energy, high specific energy, High specific power and longevity numbers.

In order to solve the contradiction between the driving range of electric cars and the acceleration of climbing performance, two sets of power systems can be considered, in which the main power improves the driving range, and the auxiliary power provides short-term auxiliary power during acceleration and climbing. . The energy of the auxiliary power system can be directly taken from the main power, and the renewable kinetic energy can also be recovered when the electric car brakes or goes downhill, and the super capacitor is used as the auxiliary energy.

In the short term, the extremely low specific energy of supercapacitors makes it impossible to be used as an electric vehicle power system alone, but it has obvious advantages as an auxiliary energy source. The combination used in electric cars is a battery-farad capacitor hybrid energy system, which requires separate specific energy and specific power of the battery.

The supercapacitor has the effect of load balancing, the discharge current of the battery reduces the usable energy of the battery, and the service life is significantly improved; compared with the battery, the supercapacitor can quickly and efficiently absorb the regenerative kinetic energy generated by the braking of the electric car. The early and equalization and energy recovery effects of super capacitors greatly improve the driving range of the vehicle. However, the system needs to comprehensively control and optimize the matching of batteries, super capacitors, motors and power inverters. The design and application of power converters and their controllers fully consider the matching between motors and super capacitors.