A graphene breakthrough hints at the future of battery power From laptops that charge in 15 minutes to electric scooters, the first round of graphene-based products could finally deliver on the promise of the much-hyped wonder material A fume cabinet at the National Graphene Institute in Manchester, UK MATTHEW LLOYD/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES Catch the 1E bus from central Belgrade, Serbia, and you’ll be riding the future. The five Chariot e-buses that operate on this route are some of the first in the world to run solely on supercapacitors, a fast-charging alternative to batteries that could revolutionize how we store energy. Instead of holding electricity as chemical potential, like a battery, supercapacitors (also known as ultracapacitors) store it in an electrical field, like static collecting on a balloon. Because there’s no chemical reaction going on, they don’t degrade like lithium-ion batteries, which rely on rare-earth metals and can end up in landfill af...