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There was an earlier thread I can no longer find suggesting that batteries still have the edge over supercapacitors. Maybe not for much longer. The January issue of IEEE Spectrum has an article on nitrogen-laced carbon tube capacitors which can store energy at a level comparable to lead-acid batteries. If this pans out, perhaps advances in battery chemistry become moot?
I'm not holding my breath. This looks like many of the research results that have a long way to go to be commercialized. The IEEE Spectrum page this appears on has a whole list of 'amazing' battery related developments on the sidebar. Many of them date back to 2014.
This is not to say that technology has not moved forward. However, Lithium Ion batteries are going to be hard to unseat. The interesting thing about Lithium Ion batteries is they are relatively environmentally friendly. They can be disposed of in the trash, unlike NiCad, etc. (Remember when we had Mercury batteries - ack). Also there are (literally) tons of Lithium available for their production. It's one of the most abundant elements.
Interesting technology. Could definitely be useful in buses. And of course , regular EV batteries are expensive and have limited recharge cycles , so they're responsible for a large share of the cost of car and it's maintenance over time. These Super caps could solve this , leading to much reduced vehicle costs.
