Could supercapacitors be the energy storage systems of the future?

New technology could eventually make traditional lithium batteries obsolete, says Steven Cutts

Recharging an electric car has become a much more time-consuming and lethargic process than refuelling a petrol or diesel vehicle (Getty)

As things stand, the internal combustion engine looks like a doomed device. The UK government has put plans in place to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by the year 2030, and those plans are critically dependent on the availability of one chemical: lithium.

Lithium ion batteries offer the potential to store energy at much higher levels than the more traditional lead acid batteries that served our car engines in the past. It is this improvement in battery technology more than anything else that has enabled us to believe that an all-electric future might happen.

A worker with car batteries at a factory for Xinwangda Electric Vehicle Battery Co Ltd in China’s eastern Jiangsu province (AFP/Getty)