Ultracapacitor Bus Recharges At Each Stop

TechReviewAl writes "A US company and its Chinese partner are piloting a bus powered by ultracapacitors in Washington DC. Ultracapacitors lack the capacity of regular batteries but are considerably cheaper and can be recharge completely in under a minute. Sinautec Automobile Technologies, based in Arlington, VA, and its Chinese partner, Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, have spent the past three years demonstrating the approach with 17 municipal buses on the outskirts of Shanghai. The executive director of Sinautec touts the energy efficiency of this approach: 'Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet [to charge an ultracapacitor], it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel.'"

Comments

We've been doing this for years

[mcrbids]

... in San Francisco, at least. They have lines of pure electric buses, with two power cables that run up to lines suspended over the road. You can see one here and I don't think this is particularly unique to San Francisco.

Is this to say that electric buses in San Francisco ALSO generate 1/3 the CO2? How are they lighter, since they aren lugging around huge ultracapacitors and regenerative brakes? How efficient are regenerative brakes? Could you put smaller ultracaps on existing buses and just use them to charge up from brakes, feeding the rest from the existing power lines?

Neat idea, but in reality, this doesn't seem like as big a step as it may seem. Might be nice to get rid of unsightly wires, though.