An example of this is a recent announcement by Maxwell Technologies about the signature of a memorandum of understanding to develop "next generation energy storage solutions leveraging the complementary characteristics of SK's lithium ion batteries and Maxwell's ultracapacitors".

This could mean that they will either develop hybrid supercapacitors, meaning by this a device with an electrode of a lithium battery and an electrode of a supercapacitor, or they will integrate supercapacitors to protect batteries (as coupled but separate devices) in different applications.

However, it seems that this recent announcement is heading in the hybrid device direction based on SK Innovations comment: "As our name implies, we are seeking to move beyond the limitations of existing technologies to develop and deliver products that better meet the requirements of the most demanding energy storage and power delivery applications," said Stephen J. Kim of SK Innovation's battery division.

On another topic, 2013 finally saw the kick-off of sales in electric cars and the new impetus on fuel cell cars. It seems that the usual suspects of the oil and gas sector are not willing to let electric cars win the challenge of the green car of the future so easily.

This is because, against the background of contentious debates on the two sides of the Atlantic in relation to the environmental impact of shale gas production, hydrogen fuel cells cars are being seen (once again) with a 'new hope'.

Companies like Toyota, GM and Daimler supported by obvious interested parties, like Shell and Total, have announced the launch of their fuel cell models in California in 2015 (Toyota) however other companies such as Volkswagen have stated that they do not see a future of hydrogen fuel cell cars at all.

As explained in IDTechEx's report, three options are in the landscape. The first is biomass gasification, which in turn could come from either biofuels or waste.

Biofuels have recently have been a quite polemic options since a recent detailed study by a recognized institution mentioned that in addition to the serious indirect consequences of biofuels they would only postpone global warming by 58 hours! It is alarming to mention that the support for biofuels costs taxpayers in Europe £6 billion/year.

Waste is a more sensitive option, but can we run all our automotive fuel demands on waste? BMW is working on the 'Landfill Gas-to-Hydrogen' project, whilst less CO2 intensive it is still not totally a zero carbon solution since still uses steam methane reforming.

This last option could be coupled with capturing and storing CO2emissions from hydrogen production from fossil fuels (known as CCS), whilst carbon capture is a portfolio of technologies already known, its last chain, the storage is actually still not very well understood. This has been evidenced by recognised British geologists such as Brian Lovell.

Finally, there is water electrolysis based on renewable energy, which is truly a clean source of hydrogen but unfortunately still terribly inefficient, since the well to wheel efficiency of fuel cell cars is just 25% which is poor compared with 50% of electric cars in the same energy conversion path.

Electricity expense constitutes the largest fraction of hydrogen production costs and high hydrogen production expenses count as the main deficiency of commercial and industrial electrolysers. Hence electrolytic methods are usually outperformed by other approaches such as steam methane reformation.

Fuel cells themselves still need to reduce their cost; this is even considering that they have already reduced their price from 1 million usd to 100,000 usd. Finally the investment of one hydrogen charging station equals six electric fast charging stations. For all these reasons hydrogen fuel cell cars still have a long way to catch up in all dimensions to compete for mass adoption.

Whether it is hydrogen fuel cells or batteries, both will perform better with supercapacitors, because neither fuel cells or batteries can cope with high power surges and if they are exposed to them they will reduce their operational lifetime.