Patent ID: 8564253

Claim:
An electric vehicle powered by ultracapacitors, the vehicle comprising: a current collector device for collecting power from an external power source; an electric motor module for providing a driving force to the vehicle; an ultracapacitor module comprising one or more ultracapacitors, the ultracapacitor module providing power to the electric motor module; a distributed ultracapacitor monitoring system comprising: a distributed communication network medium including one or more transmission links, a master device coupled to the distributed communication network medium, including a host industrial controller area network (iCAN) processing unit for communicating iCAN control messages with the distributed communication network medium, and at least one child node device, each child node device including: a child iCAN processing unit that communicates iCAN control messages with the master device over the distributed communication medium, and a link to a sensor device for at least one of the one or more ultracapacitors, the plurality of ultracapacitors being coupled to the electric motor module for providing power to the electric vehicle a charger device comprising: an insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) that receives an input voltage from the current collector and supplies power comprising a chopped output voltage to the ultracapacitor module, and a control device that receives a temperature signal associated with at least one of the one or more ultracapacitors and transmits a power control signal to the IGBT device, wherein the control device is configured to adjust power supplied by the IGBT devices to the ultracapacitor module by adjusting the charging voltage based on the temperature signal and at least one signal from the master device.