Tom Stanton Creates a Supercapacitor-Powered Dragster

While supercapacitors don’t hold a huge amount of energy compared to batteries, they can be charged, literally, in seconds. They can also expel all of this power in a similarly short amount of time, making them seemingly perfect for an RC dragster.

In the video below, Tom Stanton explores just how to make such an RC vehicle, with a bank of twelve 50F supercapacitors. This power source can be charged up to 11V in seconds, although only providing a brief burst of energy to the rig. The dragster itself features a carbon fiber rod chassis, a micro-servo linkage setup for steering, and belt-driven wheels in the back with separate motors. This would theoretically give it more traction than a standard differential-based car, but as shown around 1:00 (with a temporary lithium battery), it still entertainingly slips quite a bit on a wet patio.

Taking this experiment further, Stanton — with the help/encouragement of a few other YouTubers you may recognize — rips out the guts of a cheap RC vehicle to replace them with a supercapacitor pack. The unmodified car runs for 27 minutes, and less then two minutes with the new power source. Notably, however, charging the new version takes just 15 seconds! As this technology advances, hopefully we’ll see more and more uses for supercaps, perhaps even allowing your actual car to charge in a much shorter time period.