Well shit on me.

Not only am I highly skeptical, I'm highly hopeful! Plus, Toronto is only a few hours away from Detroit, so importing one of these could make me all sorts of toecurl happy.

Here's hoping it doesn't cost an arm, leg and my first born.

Well, batteries are among the last holdouts resisting the improvement curve. Processors jump almost daily, light bulbs are falling to LEDs, hell, even steel alloys have been improved in strength and melting point but batteries still use old fashioned alkaline, ni-cad, nimh, li-ion and similar technologies. I would be surprised if a real breakthrough was imminent. I'm just surprised they aim for the large-capacity market and not the more ubiquitous small battery market.

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Yes, but can it catch on fire?!?

Why not make the whole body a battery? now THAT would change the world...

bigTrue says:

"Well shit on me."

Uh, no thanks....

Sounds good to me. If it doesnt lose charge like crappy betetry cars did back then in the past 5-6 years then good, I'll abuse it, floor it, brake fast, do donuts, spin out my tires, and have fun...as long as the police arent watching. And they dont discover that my car have been upgraded with new power with a new type of bettery that isnt listed in my title....

One thing I'm interested in seeing is (assuming this is all legit, and these batteries begin taking over the market, as per EESTORs plans) is how the automotive fuel market adjusts. 'Juice' Stations @ hghway intersections? Pretty much any business could set up a drivethrough with an extension cord. Unless the gub'ment ensures there's sufficient red tape to make moving into the electric fueling business only likely for the deep pocketed (ahem, big oil). So what then? Black market electric fueling stations? Some rogue burger flipper at the exit #19 Mickie D's, standing outside with and orange cord? Rundown, boarded-up "zap houses" in urban neighborhoods?
Or, if the market is left open to any entrepreneur - you could make and sell juice just about anywhere. You could have solar powered, unmanned, self-service stations anywhere along any road, it wouldn't matter much if there were any infrastructure to tap into. And the panels wouldn't have to be able to produce as quickly as they 'fill' a customer, just have some of these new batteries underground, and they'd be recharding during the stations downtime.

Gizmodo: "10 times more powerful than all others on the planet"

Technology Review: "Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries"

Setting aside the meaninglessness of Gizmodo's usage of "powerful" and MIT's usage of "punch per pound", lead-acid batteries certainly don't have the best performance per weight of all batteries on the planet.

That said, these people make some extraordinary claims and I'm excited to see their extraordinary evidence.

I'm still really skeptical of this. There's a huge amount of energy in one spot and that seems prone to an accident involving a huge explosion or a huge power dump. They claim it won't arch if a spike is driven through it, but they fail to mention if that Spike will then be at some huge voltage, and any interaction from there will cause a huge amperage to run through whatever contacts it. Say hello to an electrical fire.

I wonder how many new power plants would have to be built to power every car if we converted to all-electrical vehicles thanks to this technology?

Not to mention the increased loads on the system as everyone plugs in their car after getting home from work...

This is not the first time a company has claimed a 10x improvement in battery technology. Every previous claim has come to nothing. As a result the industry generally takes these claims with a very large grain of salt.

Of course at the same time there's always the hope that this time it'll come true.

This sounds great, one thing I'm wondering about though is ozone pollution. Electric motors produce ozone, if most cars are zipping around with electric motors, will we simply be swapping greenhouse gasses for something a little more toxic?

I look forward to playing my Gizmondo from the passenger seat of this super capacitor powered car, while on the way home to play Duke Nukem Forever on my Phantom game station in my room-temperature fusion powered house.

oneleggedchewbacca: That was kind of funny as I hadn't really thought about the idea of "juice stations."

I suppose the stations will have to be licensed and regulated to make sure the meters on the "pumps" are valid and that the power source is clean.

"I wonder how many new power plants would have to be built to power every car if we converted to all-electrical vehicles thanks to this technology?"

There was a study not long ago that reported that about 80% of the US transportation energy needs could be met by the existing electrical grids if plug-in hybrids were charged at night, during off-peak electrical usage times. Because we use less power at night there is enough spare transmission capacity to carry a great many electric vehicles.

Of course we would consume greater quantities of the fuels used to produce the power, but this can be done at existing power plants.

Perhaps with the already increasing demand for electricity, plus this, some of the greener energy programs will get more funding. There is a lot of energy in the ocean and all it's doing now is breaking up coastlines.

The $9 of electricity for a 500 mile trip seems a bit optimistic (a BOE calc is more like $14). But still - with automobiles using gasoline at 20% efficiency, while an electric car would be about 90% efficient and central power generators at 70% efficiency, switching the automotive fleet to electric over time would cut energy use to a third of what it is now.

Side benefit would be eliminating all them little particles and CO2 emissions...

Too bad tuning an electric car is a pain in the ass.