Still waiting for a product. AA or AAA size ultracapacitors, at least? Been hearing about them for quite a while now.

This is very encouraging, and well written too. One could drive around a city picking up charges at red lights. I'm sure that robots can make a safe, powerful connection faster than the Wood Bros., drawn by a signal within range.

XS400-- not THESE carbon nanotubes, you haven't! Too good to be true? Hopefully not...

I shall watch their career with great interest.

The problem with fast charging (at the present at least) isn't just pushing that much juice into the batteries, it's pushing that much juice through the wires leading to the charger setup. Charging the storage equivalent of a new tesla's 100-kwh battery pack in "a few seconds" would require about 10% of the entire output of a typical nuclear power plant, and cables to match.

Seems much more promising than most battery technologies we hear about. Very interested to see where this goes!

I don 't believe it. Finally, someone wrote a battery article about whats been done instead of what we might can do.....someday. This is pretty good news concerning batteries when you think of the applications.

paul314, thank you for making the point I was about to make. Whether or not the "battery" can be charged quickly, it will be essentially impossible to recharge a 50kwhr vehicle in "seconds", or even minutes.
There would be great application for hand tools and other small systems, though, such as the factory robots that were mentioned.

I would say that the physics, chemistry and thermodynamics of the claims do not add up, at least based on what reported in the article

first, somebody tell this guy this difference between a battery and a capacitor. he seems to think the two terms are interchangable. there not. second, tell him the difference between power and capacity. HALFWAY through the article he mentions the fact that the gravimetric density is a QUARTER that of a li-ion battery, completely nullifying the primary assertion that this is some kind of substitute for a car battery. and he doesn't even mention the volumetric density at all. third, how many times have we all read about how many revolutionary new batteries and ultracapacitors that never went anywhere? so it sounds like these guys have a promising new ultracapacitor that MIGHT have enough capacity to absorb the power generated by a regenerative brake and see application in electric race cars. if so, that would be a BIG advancement which might someday lead to some commercial application too. but he didn't just forget to mention the volumetric density. he left it out for a reason.