[Al Skierkiewicz]

As long as you are aware of these things...know that a 5ms pulse will not get the car to 8M/s due to other physical laws. You can connect capacitors in parallel to increase the capacity. I don't know what your weight budget is but some of the caps that you can find for car audio applications might be just what you are looking for. The super caps you find listed in many of the electronic catalogs are designed more for memory backup applications. They are not designed for high currents but can keep CMOS memory backup working well for long periods of time. Manufacturers sometimes actually list them as batteries. For best results, you want to keep the series resistance between the caps and the motor(s) as low as possible. To achieve this, use the same techniques as you would on an FRC robot. Use large guage wire (#10 or larger) and make the wire runs as short as possible. I am guessing you are planning on using some kind of switch to connect the caps to the motor so be sure your switch can handle the instantaneous currents you will be running. Please also remember that the motor is not 100% efficient when you are making your calculations. Just to be on the safe side, be sure to short the caps after you run to insure they are not holding a charge when you have completed the run. Normally, I would recommend "bleeder resistors" in your design, but I think they would be counter productive in this application. When choosing a cap, look for one with low ESR (equivalent series resistance) for best results.