The ability to absorb a full charge almost instantaneously is a great advantage. Of course the flip side of capacitors being able to discharge their entire charge almost instantaneously has a huge downside if people believe that they are going to be useful for power storage in cars and trucks.
I am not talking about people putting themselves into cardiac arrest or being burned by inadvertently shorting the decent sized capacitors that used to be found in old TVs and radios. No, I am talking about what happens when two conductors with only a large fuse from the power company come together. We are talking about an explosion.
I unfortunately through stupidity, carelessness and being in the proximity of people who had no idea what they were doing have witnessed the awesome power of mishandled electricity first hand. When you are talking about capacitors used to start large single phase electric motors, or for correcting the power factor for large idling 3 phase motors you can be starting to get into the realm of truly dangerous capacitors. But we also have people who obtain giant capacitors for “jumping” cars etc. These monsters can do a lot of damage if mishandled. But this is still nothing compared to the capacities and power of the capacitors that this article is speculating will one day be available.
A capacitor with as much storage capacity as a current Tesla car battery literally could be used as a bomb if the whatever protection was built into it was bypassed. So while I am fascinated by the technology and potential... it is worrisome to think about people someday tooling around town while sitting on top of a massive amount of energy that could all be discharged in an instant in some sort of mishap.
Like a 20 gallon tank of gasoline?..................
The expansion factor of a copper bussbar’s transition to vapor within an arc blast is exceptional. Twenty-thousand Kelvin exposure and the shock wave generated aren’t forgiving.
Flip-side...this kind of energy density/release might enable options to transition from chemical propellants. Something close to a light gas gun burning hydrogen, and scaled for personal carry?
A 155mm Gun was built and delivered exceptional range. The small demonstrator fired a 15mm projectile. So, not fiction—just needed self guiding ammo, which the rail gun project finally delivered a decade or so later. Company contracted was ULTRON.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a462130.pdf