电池竞赛，谁是最终赢家？

乍一看，在这个春季的清晨，SK Innovation研发园区的一切都是那么的安静祥和。该园区位于大田。这是一个整洁、整齐划一的城市，亦是由韩国政府打造的科技中心，在首尔乘坐高铁南行一小时即可到达。在SK绵延不断的园区内，遍布着雅致的现代玻璃钢铁建筑，哪怕是登上高大上的建筑杂志也毫无问题。其中的一栋建筑是图书馆，里面的桌子上堆满了一卷卷的厚纸和启发创意的报事贴。另一栋建筑中设有咖啡吧，工程师们正在排队等待咖啡饮品。凉风习习，鸟儿欢唱，粉红的樱花正在怒放。

SK研发业务的商业策略负责人黄在尹（音译）驾驶着起亚电动汽车，载着我在园区转了转，然后停在了山顶上的一个站点。在我们身前是一座七层的立方体建筑K-8，整个建筑覆盖着哑光银壁板，没有任何可见的窗户。其唯一可见的标志位于一面墙的顶部角落，它以非写实的方式勾勒出了一个橙色的熟悉物体：一块电池。K-8的外观看起来十分古怪，近乎华而不实。黄在尹解释说，园区内的其他四栋建筑，外加正在修建的一座，都是用于开展电池研究的。为此，SK聘请了数百人，而且还在不断招兵买马。当我要求进入K-8参观时，遭到了黄在尹的拒绝。我在拿起照相机拍照时也被他拦了下来。他说：“在这个区域，对建筑拍照也是不允许的。”

SK的研发园区一直在不断扩张，因为公司有着悠久的技术传承，它是韩国历史最早的炼油商。如今，这家石化公司已经选择在未来发展与电动汽车相关的产业，并与全球最大的汽车制造商签署了电池生产合约，例如大众。在签署这一合约之前，大众因为再三故意违反柴油车排放标准的丑闻而遭遇了毁灭性打击。随后，公司下定决心要以绿色企业的身份回归市场，并将很大一部分车型从烧油改为用电。SK与大众和其他汽车制造商签署了巨额订单，其中包括声称要在2022年推出10款纯电动车型的戴姆勒，以及中国最大的纯电动汽车制造商北京汽车集团。SK正加速在中国、欧洲和美国建造大型电池厂，包括一家距离亚特兰大一个小时车程的工厂。到2025年，SK的电池生产将得到大幅扩张，公司目前在认真考虑在这一期间为该业务注资约100亿美元。这笔投资对于一家如此庞大的集团来说也是一个不小的数目。尽管SK的业务面十分广泛，但它在过去的50多年中一直都致力于开采来自于地下的黑金。黄在尹在评论SK的电池业务时表示：“如今，订单量实在是太大了。”

At first glance, all seems serene on a spring morning at the research-and-development campus of SK Innovation, one of Korea’s biggest industrial conglomerates. The campus sits in Daejeon, a tidy, planned city an hour’s high-speed-train ride south of Seoul that the national government has built up as a technology hub. Dotting SK’s rolling acres are tastefully modern glass-and-steel buildings that wouldn’t be out of place in a glossy architecture magazine. One contains a library, its tables stocked with rolls of butcher paper and Post-it notes to spur creativity. Another houses an espresso bar where engineers queue for caffeination. A cool breeze blows. Birds chirp. Pink cherry blossoms bloom.

Then Jaeyoun Hwang, who directs business strategy for SK’s R&D operation, steers the Kia electric car in which he is driving me around the campus to a stop at the top of a hill. In front of us looms K-8, a seven-story-tall cube of a building sheathed in matte silver siding and devoid of any visible windows. Its only discernible marking is, at the top corner of one wall, a stylized orange outline of a familiar object: a battery. K-8 appears whimsical, almost a bauble, until Hwang explains that four other buildings on the campus, plus another one under construction, also are for battery research—an activity at SK that employs several hundred people and counting. When I ask to go inside K-8 for a look, Hwang says it’s out of the question. When I raise my camera to take a picture, he stops me. “In this area,” he says, “photographs of the buildings are prohibited.”

SK has a sprawling R&D campus because it has a storied technological pedigree—as Korea’s oldest oil refiner. Now the petrochemical company is hitching its future to electric cars. It has inked deals to make batteries for some of the world’s largest automakers, notably Volkswagen AG, which, following a crippling scandal in which it was found to have deliberately and repeatedly violated pollution rules in producing its diesel vehicles, has pledged a green corporate rebirth, shifting much of its lineup to cars that run on electricity rather than oil. SK has made huge deals with VW and other automakers, including Daimler AG, which says it will sell 10 pure-electric car models by 2022, and Beijing Automotive Group, or BAIC Group, China’s largest maker of pure-electric cars. SK is racing to build massive battery plants in China, Europe, and the United States, including one an hour’s drive from Atlanta. It is moving by 2025 to balloon its battery production, mulling investing some $10 billion in the effort over that span. That’s a serious number even for a behemoth that in its various corporate incarnations, has spent more than a half-century processing black gold sucked from the ground. “These days,” Hwang says of SK’s battery business, “the order volume is huge.”

多年以来，电池升级竞赛仅限于消费电子。这是一个不断增长的业务，但无需为其再次配置资本。如今，面对道路上电动汽车以及电网中可再生电力的攻势，这场竞赛演变成了一场企业和地缘政治的死斗。一夜之间，众多顶级跨国公司开始异常严肃地对待这件事情，尤其是汽车巨头、原油大拿以及发电公司。此前，它们认为经济的储能方式是一个白日梦，如今，它们将其视为一种现存的威胁。如果不加以利用，它们可能会因此而被边缘化。它还会拉开全球主要经济体之间的距离，这些国家将21世纪自身在储能领域的主导地位等同于19世纪对煤的控制以及20世纪对石油的控制。这里存在一个明显的信号：电池技术竞赛已经深深融入当前正在进行的美中贸易摩擦中。

即便是电池怪才杰弗瑞·张伯伦也觉得这一转变着实令人吃惊。多年来，他曾经供职于阿尔贡国家实验室，负责美国政府的一个顶级电池研究项目。如今，他主导着芝加哥风投基金Volta Energy Technologies，从紧张的电力、石油和其他公司那里获取资金，然后投资储能技术初创企业。张伯伦说，这些企业认为自己必须为其赌约购买多重保险，因为“可再生能源对于这些公司来说具有大规模的破坏性。”与此同时，中国已经宣布把打造世界级的电池产业作为一项国家级战略，并且为此公布了相关优惠政策。张伯伦问：“这意味着什么？它们是否会成为电池行业的新沙特？”

For years, the race to build a better battery was contained to consumer electronics. It was a growing business, but it wasn’t going to reorder capitalism. Now, amid an onslaught of electric cars on the road and renewable electricity on the power grid, the race is gearing up into a corporate and geopolitical death match. It suddenly has the dead-serious attention of many of the planet’s biggest multinationals, particularly auto giants, oil majors, and power producers. Having historically dismissed affordable energy storage as a pipe dream, they now view it as an existential threat—one that, if they don’t harness it, could disintermediate them. It also divides the world’s major economic powers, which see dominance of energy storage in the 21st century as akin to control of coal in the 19th century and of oil in the 20th. One clear sign: Battery-technology competition is deeply woven into the ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and China.

Even Jeffrey Chamberlain, a battery geek, finds today’s shift breathtaking. For years he worked at Argonne National Laboratory, heading one of the U.S. government’s top battery-research efforts. Now he leads a Chicago-based venture-capital fund, Volta Energy Technologies, that takes money from nervous power, oil, and other companies and invests it in energy-storage-technology startups. The corporations have concluded they have to hedge their bets, Chamberlain says, because “what renewable energy represents to these companies is massive destruction.” China, meanwhile, has declared a world-leading battery industry a strategic national priority, doling out incentives to get the job done. “What does that imply?” Chamberlain asks. “Are they the new Saudi Arabia of batteries?”

数十亿美元的资金进入了电池研发领域，也让如今的电池行业成为了科技行业的香饽饽，一如10年前的半导体行业。初创企业的吸金速度尤为迅猛，每一家公司都疯狂地许诺在能源储存难题上有了重大突破。这些资金来自于寻求技术解决方案的跨国公司、寻求新盈利目标的风投公司以及各式各样打着拯救地球旗号的亿万富翁，而且太平洋两岸均有所贡献。

有些初创企业将大获全胜，但失败的更多。不管怎么样，它们代表着电池竞赛的最前沿，但那里的冲撞也最为致命。出名的大多都是勇者，而经得起时间考验的突破获得发展的可能性最大。对比那些大公司，初创企业更加善于推销自身的业务。这一点是合情合理的，因为它们渴望获得资本。

当今的全球电池竞赛有两大热潮。第一个热潮是电动车电池，它已经十分成熟。能源数据公司Wood Mackenzie预测，电动车电池的市值将从2017年的130亿美元大幅增至2024年的410亿美元。正是基于这个原因，埃隆·马斯克的特斯拉公司才建造了一家大型电池厂，也就是特斯拉所称的“巨型工厂”（gigafactory），位于内华达州。也正是考虑到这个市场规模，全球几乎所有的汽车制造商（因特斯拉在电动车市场的表现而羞愧不已，但已下定决心要迎头赶上）向SK和其他主要电池制造商抛出了巨额订单，这些电池制造商的总部基本上都位于亚洲。此外，这一市场前景也在吸引它们投资那些承诺能够带来突破性技术的初创企业。

另一大热潮才刚刚起步，属于电网用电池：其设备大小跟厂房差不多，旨在储存大量电量，有可能一次储存数天或数周的用量。这类技术能够带来重大的转型，也就是从煤和天然气这类化石燃料向太阳能和风能转变。虽然煤和天然气对气候有不利影响，但可以随时启用或关闭，而风能和太阳能则并不是全天候的存在。电网用电池市场依然处于初期，基本上依靠政府补贴，也就是说风险较大，而且是否能够取得成功还不好说。一群侃侃而谈的技术专家正在摩拳擦掌，率先向市场推出其长时间供电储能设备，这些专家的背后都是财大气粗的投资者，从比尔·盖茨支持的基金一直到沙特阿美。

在这两大热潮中，面临风险的不仅仅是一些企业家及其带有投机目的的投资者，全球经济的未来亦是如此。自从本杰明·富兰克林在闪电风暴中放飞带钥匙的风筝之后，事实证明，人们很难大批量地储存电量。这也是为什么汽车仍然在烧油的原因，因为油箱可轻易地储存燃油；这也是为什么人们仍然需要架设数千英里的传输线缆，把电从发电端传到使用端的原因；而且这也是为什么大多数发电厂依然采用燃烧化石燃料发电的原因，虽然它对环境存在不利影响，但却异常的可靠。拉一下开关，整个系统开始运转，然后电灯就亮了。

如果人们可以以低成本储存大量的电量，行业将发生巨大的变化。电动车的零部件比燃油车少，因此从规模化来讲，其制造成本要更低，也就比内燃机引擎更加优越。白天，人们可以将太阳能转化为电能，夜间则储存风能，而且如果成本合适的话，可再生能源能够成为一种持续而不是间歇性的能源来源。鉴于交通运输和发电的温室气体排放量占到全球总量的约40%，人类的碳产出量实际上可能会因此而大幅下降。科学家警告说，如果要避免尤为危险的气候变化，人们必须在本世纪中叶基本上实现零排放。

经济赢家和输家的大范围重新洗牌可能会导致知名企业寻求新的业务模式。汽车制造商将不得不更换装备，否则就会出局。原油公司至少不得不在很大程度上将自己重新塑造为可再生能源提供商，否则将逐渐淡出人们的视野。公用事业则不得不转而采用新的去中心化业务，其中，它们曾经运营着大量的太阳能电板、风力涡轮机和电池。换句话说，寻找低成本电力储存方式会让全球经济短路，然后重新洗牌。

这一点能实现吗？今年春天，我为了找到这个答案烧了不少燃油。我开车到访了北加州的不同地区，并乘坐飞机前往世界各地。在硅谷、波士顿、中国和韩国，我发现初创企业正在蓬勃发展，而大公司则为了生存而努力奋斗。所有企业都十分紧张，不过一些企业在这一方面更具前瞻性。如今，储能是所有泡沫市场的幕后推手。

Unprecedented billions of dollars are pouring into battery research and development, rendering batteries today the sort of technological target that semiconductors were a generation ago. A particularly fast stream is flowing into startups, each promising more brashly than the next to have cracked the code on the energy-storing black box. That money is coming from multinationals scrambling for technological fixes, from venture-capital firms looking for the next big home run, and from sundry billionaires who say they want to save the planet. And it’s coming from both sides of the Pacific.

Some startups will win big; many more will implode. Either way, they are the leading edge of the battery race—the pack in which the jostling is most cutthroat, the daring is most on display, and the long-term breakthroughs are most likely to develop. They’re also more talkative than the big players about what they’re doing; that stands to reason because they’re hungrier for investment.

Today’s global battery race has two main heats. One, already well underway, is for batteries for electric cars, whose market value the energy-data firm Wood Mackenzie projects will jump to $41 billion in 2024, from $13 billion in 2017. This is the market that has prompted Elon Musk’s Tesla to build a massive battery plant—what Tesla calls a “gigafactory”—in Nevada. This is the market that’s pushing essentially every global automaker—embarrassed by Tesla in the electric-car market and adamant not to be embarrassed anymore—to lob massive orders at SK and other major battery producers, almost all headquartered in Asia. It’s also inducing them to invest in startups promising technological leaps.

The other heat, just beginning, is for batteries for the electric grid: factory-size devices designed to store massive amounts of energy, potentially for days or weeks at a time. Such technology could enable an epic transition from fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas, which are altering the climate but can be fired on or off at will, to the sun and the wind, which are clean but don’t always shine or blow. The market for them remains nascent and largely dependent on government subsidies—which is to say that it’s risky and anyone’s to win. A swashbuckling band of technologists, bankrolled by deep-pocketed investors from a Bill Gates–backed fund to Saudi Aramco, are gunning to get their long-term energy-storage devices to market first.

At stake in both heats is more than the fate of some entrepreneurs and their speculative backers. At stake is the future of the global economy. Ever since Benjamin Franklin flew a key on a kite in a lightning storm, electricity has proved difficult to store in large quantities. That’s why cars still run on oil, which can be stored easily in tanks. It’s why transmission lines still are required to transport electricity hundreds or thousands of miles from where it’s generated to where it’s consumed. And it’s why the vast majority of electricity still is produced by burning fossil fuels, which, for all their environmental downsides, are ruthlessly reliable. Flick a switch, the system springs to life, and the lights go on.

If electricity could be stored in large amounts at low cost, radical changes could follow. The electric car, which has fewer parts than a petroleum-powered vehicle and thus, at scale, should be cheaper to manufacture, could eclipse the internal-combustion engine. Sunlight could be stored as electricity during the day, and wind power at night, and renewable energy could, at acceptable cost, be made to behave like a constant, rather than as an intermittent, energy source. Given that transportation and electricity together account for about 40% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, humanity’s carbon output—which scientists warn will have to crater essentially to zero by mid-century to avoid particularly dangerous climate change—actually might start plummeting.

A grand reordering of economic winners and losers likely would result, with established players scrambling for new business models. Automakers would have to retool or die. Oil companies would have to reinvent themselves at least in significant part as renewable-energy providers or shrivel into oblivion. Utilities would have to pivot to a new and decentralized business in which they operated huge numbers of solar panels and wind turbines and batteries. Figuring out how to store electricity economically, in other words, could short-circuit the global economy and then rewire it.

Can it be done? I burned a lot of fossil fuel this spring trying to find out. I drove around Northern California and flew around the world. In Silicon Valley, Boston, China, and Korea, I found startups clawing their way up and corporations struggling not to fall down. All were nervous, though some were more forthcoming about that than others. Energy storage today is the mother of all frothy markets.

然而，从基础构架来说，电池是一个较为简单的设备。它包含四个部分：带正电的电极，又称为阳极；带负电的电极，又称为阴极；连接两极的物质，又称为电解质，通常是液体；薄膜，又称为隔板，用于在“短路”时防止某些分子从一个电极游向另一个电极，而“短路”会导致起火。过薄的隔板被看作是2016年某些三星手机一连串火灾的罪魁祸首。

当电池为设备提供电量时，内部的化学反应将原子分解为称为离子的带正电分子，以及称为电子的带负电分子。离子和电子会同时从阳极流向阴极，但会形成不同的流。离子会穿过电池；电子会在设备中形成回路，为其提供电力。

在传统的电池中，当所有的离子和电子从阳极流向阴极后，电池的电量也就用尽了。可充电电池在通电后可以吸收新电力，让离子和电子流向正极，从而再次为设备供电。

The battery is, in its basic architecture, a simple device. It contains four main parts: a positively charged electrode, called a cathode; a negatively charged electrode, called an anode; a substance that connects them, called an electrolyte, which typically is a liquid; and a membrane, known as a separator, that prevents certain particles from traveling from one electrode to the other in a “short circuit,” which could spark a fire. A too-thin separator was implicated in a rash of fires in 2016 in some Samsung phones.

When a battery is powering a device, chemical reactions inside it break atoms into positively charged particles, called ions, and negatively charged particles, called electrons. The ions and electrons move simultaneously from the anode to the cathode, but they move in different streams. The ions move through the battery; the electrons create a circuit through the device, powering it.

In a conventional battery, when all its ions and electrons have moved from the anode to the cathode, the battery is dead. A rechargeable battery can be plugged in to receive new electricity, positioning ions and electrons in the anode to power the device again.

电池研发的一个主要目标就是实现“能量密度”的最大化：也就是单位体积或质量的电池中能够塞进的能量值。它基本上取决于阳极能够容纳的离子数量；有了更多的离子，电池就会有更多可用的电子为设备供电。离子数和阳极至上的理论确立了如今电池研发的两项重要事实。

第一，基本上现今所有电池的离子都来自于同一种物质：锂。锂是一种重量特别轻的元素，这也就意味着其离子非常小，因此，阳极也就可以塞入更多的离子。正是因为这个原因，大多数电子设备，从iPhone到特斯拉，都是采用的“锂离子”电池。

另一个现实在于，如今电池研发的一个重要方向就是打造更好的阳极：也就是容纳海量的锂离子。

安普瑞斯便是非常有希望在超级阳极方面有所突破的公司之一。该公司的总部位于硅谷，是一家长达十年的初创企业，其大多数业务都位于中国，而且两国的投资者共同为这家公司倾注了1.4亿美元的资金。这些公司包括硅谷风投公司Trident Capital 和Kleiner Perkins、中国私募股权公司软银赛富，以及无锡政府旗下的投资公司无锡工业发展集团。安普瑞斯在无锡设有一家很大的电池工厂。与众多初创企业不同的是，安普瑞斯已经在生产电池，而且面向知名客户销售。安普瑞斯的首席执行官孙康称，公司去年的营收约为5000万美元。但其技术依然存在很多问题，其未来也是也存在诸多不确定因素。他说，“我们还没有脱离险境。”

孙康是科技行业专业人士。他十分注重发型，穿着笔挺的衬衣，说话开门见山。他在中国长大，在布朗大学获得博士学位，并一步步做上了霍尼韦尔的副总裁，随后回到了中国，帮助组建了JA Solar，后者目前已经是全球最大的太阳能电板制造商。目前，他在旧金山附近居住，开着特斯拉，而且似乎经常在全球各地之间穿梭。

他说，自己当前担任这家泛太平洋电池初创企业的负责人是“职业生涯中最困难的一项工作。”在与他共度的数个小时中，他嘴里一直会提到一个词，几乎是下意识的自语，就像是口头禅一样：“不容易。”也就是：“电池科技并不是一件容易的事情。”

让孙康感到痛苦的来源是：超级阳极令人抓狂的不稳定性。

大多数锂离子电池的阳极都采用石墨制作，这种材料很便宜，而且广泛存在。与其他众多初创企业一样，安普瑞斯正在试图采用硅来做阳极，单位克重的硅所能够容纳的锂离子数量从理论上来讲是石墨的10倍。“从理论上来讲”是一个巨大的警告。硅作为锂离子储存者的优势也存在着一个重大的缺陷：当硅被塞满大量的锂离子之后，它会膨胀。这种膨胀会破坏阳极材料，大幅降低超级电池理应拥有的寿命。

10多年前，斯坦福大学的材料科学教授崔屹开发了一种新的技术来解决硅在阳极的膨胀问题。该技术使用的硅结构在纳米级别像是翻转毛刷上的单根鬃毛。实验室的实验证明，在每个单元塞入锂离子之后仍然有大量的空间进行膨胀，而不会碰到其他的鬃毛，或导致阳极破裂。将这一理念商业化的正是安普瑞斯，该技术又称为“硅纳米线”。

孙康随即担任了该公司的首席执行官，他认为自己在经营数年之后就可以将其卖掉或上市，并借此大赚一笔。10年后，他依然是如坐针毡。他说：“公司现在的规模是之前的30倍，否则，我们无钱可赚。”

A major goal in battery research is maximizing “energy density”: the amount of energy that can be shoved into a battery of a given volume or weight. That depends largely on the number of ions its anode can hold; the more ions, the more electrons the battery will have available to keep the device running. This primacy of ions and anode frames two crucial realities of today’s battery quest.

One is that virtually all batteries today get their ions from the same element: lithium. Lithium is a particularly “light” element, which means its ions are particularly small, which means a particularly large number of them can be stuffed into an anode. So most electric devices today, from iPhones to Teslas, are powered by “lithium-ion” batteries.

The other reality is that a crucial part of today’s battery quest is the bid to build a better anode: one that can accommodate especially massive quantities of lithium ions.

Among the many hopefuls trying to perfect a super-anode is Amprius, a decade-old startup with headquarters in Silicon Valley, most of its operations in China, and investors in both countries that collectively have pumped about $140 million into the company. They include Trident Capital and Kleiner Perkins, two Silicon Valley venture capital firms; SAIF Partners, a Chinese private-equity firm; and the Wuxi Industry Development Group, a government-owned investment company in Wuxi, the Chinese city in which Amprius has a sizable battery factory. Unlike many startups, Amprius is already producing batteries and selling them to prominent customers. Amprius had about $50 million in revenue last year, says Kang Sun, the company’s chief executive. But its technology remains buggy, and its future is hardly assured. “We’re not out of the woods yet,” he says.

Sun is a tech-industry lifer. He favors coiffed hair, pressed shirts, and straight talk. He grew up in China, earned a Ph.D. at Brown, worked his way up to vice president at Honeywell, and then went back to China to help build JA Solar, now one of the world’s largest solar-panel makers. Today he lives near San Francisco, drives a Tesla, and flies seemingly constantly around the world.

His current gig as head of a transpacific battery startup is, he says, “the most difficult job I’ve had in my life.” Over the hours I spent with him, one phrase kept popping out of his mouth, muttered almost subconsciously, as if a mantra: “not easy.” As in: “Battery technology is not easy.”

The source of his lament: the maddening elusiveness of the super-anode.

The anodes in most lithium-ion batteries are made of graphite, a substance that’s cheap and plentiful. Amprius, like many other startups, is trying to make anodes from silicon, which, gram for gram, theoretically can hold 10 times as many lithium ions as graphite can. “Theoretically” is a colossal caveat. Silicon’s upside as a lithium-ion hoarder has a major downside too: When silicon is stuffed with lots of lithium ions, it swells. That swelling can crack the anode material, dramatically shortening a supposed super-battery’s life.

More than a decade ago, a Stanford materials-science professor, Yi Cui, developed a new technique to avert silicon swelling in an anode. It uses a structure of silicon that, at nanoscale, resembles a single bristle of an upturned brush. Lab experiments proved that, as each is stuffed with lithium ions, it has plenty of space to swell without knocking into another bristle and cracking the anode. Amprius is the company created to commercialize the concept, known as “silicon nanowire.”

Sun soon signed on as CEO, figuring he’d spend a few years building Amprius and then flip it or take it public at a handsome profit. A decade later, he’s still on the hot seat. “We have to scale up 30 times bigger,” he says. “Otherwise, we cannot make money.”

安普瑞斯位于硅谷心脏加州桑尼维尔的人才中心是一个像碉堡一样的套房，坐落于一个不起眼的工业园区。墙面十分破旧，家具看起来像是租的，虽然实际上并非如此。我有一天过去参观的时候看到，男厕所尿池下方的地板上铺着满是污点的硬纸板。今年夏天，安普瑞斯将搬到另一个办公地点，原因在于公司没有续签租约，而且新地点的租金更低。安普瑞斯并未将资金用于打造舒适的员工环境，而是用于科研和制造。

在桑尼维尔办公室的一个实验室中，装着安普瑞斯的核心产品：一个房间大小的机器，由安普瑞斯设计，并按照具体规格在欧洲制造，它能够将硅烷气体和其他气体喷在金属基质上；接下来的化学反应便能够打造出硅纳米线。人们可以通过机器上的美国银币大小的窥视孔观察这一过程，气体在输送过程中是一团紫色的雾霭。整个过程中的所有环节都十分复杂和讲究，包括气体成分、进入时的压力和温度，基质在机器内部运输带上的传输速度。

机器生产的阳极材料为军舰灰双面卷状物。该材料每一面的一平方厘米封装了约20万根硅纳米线。这些材料在分割后被送到多个小实验室房间，身穿白外套、戴着蓝手术面罩的员工将通过手工来组装电池。安普瑞斯表示，其中最好的电池的能量密度要比传统的锂电池高60%。但它的一个缺陷在于，其充放电次数不如传统的锂电池，这也是安普瑞斯正在努力改善的问题。

安普瑞斯最先进的电池技术引起了美国军方的注意，后者正在测试其在服装上的使用情况，士兵可能会穿着这些服装在野外为其设备充电。到目前为止，该电池的最大买家是空客。作为Zephyr项目的一部分，空客正在名为高海拔假卫星（HAPS）的无人机上测试这些电池。去年12月，这两家公司宣布，其中一架由安普瑞斯电池供电的空客无人机飞行时长超过了25天，“创下了平流层飞行的新耐力和高度记录。”

对于孙康来说，空客合约既是其救生索，也是一张警示牌。他说，对于这些电池，“我们向空客开出了天价”。“这种价格是不可持续的”。换句话说，在桑尼维尔打造的这些电池类似于在萨维尔街（世界最顶级西服手工缝制圣地——译者注）缝制的西服：量身定做、昂贵，因此具有风险。孙康在谈到加州业务时表示：“如果这项业务无法规模化，那么将难以生存。”

Amprius’s intellectual hub, in Sunnyvale, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley, is a bunker-like suite in an unremarkable industrial park. The walls are scuffed, the furniture looks rented even though it isn’t, and one day when I visit, the floor under the men’s-room urinals is lined with cardboard sheets pocked with stains. This summer, Amprius is moving to a different office; it’s moving because its lease wasn’t renewed, but it will pay lower rent. Money at Amprius isn’t spent on creature comforts. It’s spent on science and manufacturing.

In a lab of the Sunnyvale office is Amprius’s crown jewel: a room-sized machine, designed by Amprius and built in Europe to its specifications, that applies a mix of silane gas and other gases to a metal substrate; the resulting chemical reaction creates the silicon nanowires. Visible through a peephole in the machine about the diameter of a silver dollar, the gas-application process is a purple haze. Everything about it is intricate and finicky: the composition of the gases; the pressure and temperature at which they’re shot in; the speed at which the substrate moves along the conveyor belt inside the machine.

Once the anode material comes out of the machine, in a double-sided roll that’s battleship gray, it packs about 200,000 silicon nanowires per square centimeter per side. It’s cut and sent into a series of small lab rooms, where workers in white coats and blue surgical masks assemble batteries essentially by hand. Amprius says the best of these batteries have an energy density about 60% higher than that of conventional lithium-ion batteries. One downside is that they don’t withstand as many discharges and charges as conventional batteries—something Amprius is working to improve.

Amprius’s cutting-edge batteries have piqued the interest of the U.S. Army, which is testing them for use in clothing that soldiers might wear to power the devices they use in the field. By far the batteries’ biggest buyer is Airbus. As part of a program dubbed Zephyr, Airbus is testing them on unmanned planes known as high-altitude pseudo-satellites, or HAPS. Last December, the two companies announced that one of the Airbus vehicles powered by Amprius batteries flew for more than 25 days, “setting a new endurance and altitude record for stratospheric flight.”

To Sun, the Airbus contract is both a lifeline and a yellow flag. “We charge them a crazy price” for the batteries, he says. “That kind of price is not sustainable.” The batteries crafted in Sunnyvale, in other words, are akin to suits sewn on Savile Row: bespoke, expensive, and therefore at risk. “If it cannot scale up,” Sun says of the California operation, “it will die.”

空客有充足的理由为安普瑞斯的天价电池买单。它正在努力开发和商业化一个成本更低的卫星替代方案，以及可行的电动空中出租机队，并在这一方面超越包括波音在内的对手。A3 by Airbus的首席执行官马克·卡辛指出，“市场上有数千家公司”称自己拥有电池领域的未来突破性技术。A3 by Airbus是空客在桑尼维尔设立的创新中心，离安普瑞斯并不远。然而，除了安普瑞斯之外，“我们并没有看到有任何证据表明，任何公司可以在中短期内拿出已经足够成熟的电池，并将其装入某款产品。”

与此同时，安普瑞斯在中国正在追逐一个更广阔的市场。在南京这座孙康长大的中国南部都市，安普瑞斯设立了另一个实验室，致力于开发不像其硅纳米线技术那么稀有、但高出行业标准的阳极材料。它是一个纳米级的硅结构，呈粉末状，然后与传统的石墨粉进行混合。随后产生的石墨-硅混合物在一家传统的电池厂进行加工。与传统电池相比，这种添加硅的简单做法通常可将能量密度提升15%。虽然其改善效果远低于硅纳米线材质，但成本要低得多。

在我到访南京的那天早上，金属货架上放置着数十袋硅粉。在我这位业余人士的眼中，这些粉末跟研磨后的咖啡差不多，唯一的区别在于褐色的深浅。有一些类似于法式烘焙咖啡，其他则属于轻度烘焙版。安普瑞斯正在向美国、欧洲、日本、韩国和中国各大汽车制造商销售这种材料进行测试。它还将粉末运到安普瑞斯于2016年在无锡附近建造的工厂。

当我到访无锡工厂时，工厂正在大量生产儿童智能手表和消费电池组使用的电池。工厂还为一家中国无人机制造商生产电池。被派往引导我参观的科研人员翟传新（音译）说，它对于工厂最近获得表电池的合约感到尤为自豪。为此，公司围绕能量密度与全球最大电池制造商之一的中国新能源科技有限公司展开了激烈竞争。翟传新提到了无锡厂服务的另一名客户：一家使用电池制作寒冷天气氧供应机器的公司。他说，这家公司向中国军方销售机器，在西藏用于医疗用途。

这一点反映了在美中两国均有业务的众多电池公司所面临的敏感问题。孙康说，在两国关系紧张之际，安普瑞斯必须在投资者和客户选择方面慎之又慎。他是美国公民，称自己更喜欢美国的生活环境。但商业就是商业：安普瑞斯刚刚完成了3000万美元的融资轮，而且所有资金来自于中国投资者。孙康解释说，电池市场“属于中国业务”。他对我说，作为第二祖国的美国“应该醒醒了”。

Airbus has compelling reasons to pay Amprius’s price. It is trying to outpace its rivals, including Boeing, in developing and commercializing both a less-expensive alternative to satellites and a viable fleet of electric-powered air taxis. “There are hundreds of startups out there” claiming they have the next big thing in batteries, says Mark Cousin, chief executive of A3 by Airbus, an innovation center the company has set up in Sunnyvale, not far from Amprius. But, other than Amprius, “we’ve not seen any evidence that any of the companies are close to having something that could potentially be mature enough to be integrated into a product in the short to medium term.”

In China, meanwhile, Amprius is chasing a broader market. In Nanjing, the southern Chinese metropolis in which Sun grew up, Amprius has another laboratory where it’s developing an anode material less rarefied than its silicon-nanowire technology but still more advanced than the industry norm. It’s a nanoscale structure of silicon manufactured as a powder and then combined with traditional graphite powder. The resulting graphite-silicon mixture is run through a conventional battery plant. This modest silicon boost typically raises a battery’s energy density by up to 15% beyond a traditional lithium-ion battery’s. That’s far less than the improvement from the silicon-nanowire material, but it’s radically cheaper.

On the morning I visit Nanjing, dozens of bags of the silicon powder are stacked on a metal shelf. To my untrained eye, they resemble ground coffee, differing only in their shade of brown. Some evoke French roast; others, a lighter blend. Amprius is supplying the material to various U.S., European, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese automakers for testing. It also trucks the powder to a factory in nearby Wuxi that was built for Amprius in 2016.

When I visit the Wuxi factory, it’s cranking out batteries for children’s smartwatches and for consumer battery packs. The factory also makes batteries for a Chinese dronemaker. Chuanxin Zhai, a scientist there who has been dispatched to walk me around, says he’s particularly proud the factory won a recent contract for the watch batteries. It did so after an intense competition over energy density with Amperex Technology Ltd., or ATL, a Chinese company that’s one of the biggest battery makers in the world. Zhai mentions another customer for which the Wuxi factory has made batteries: a firm that uses them to make cold-weather oxygen-¬supply machines. That firm, he says, sells the machines to the Chinese military, for medical use in Tibet.

That hints at the sensitivities facing many battery companies with footprints in both the U.S. and China. Amid tensions between the two countries, Sun says, Amprius has to be careful about whom it accepts as investors and customers. He’s a U.S. citizen and says he prefers American living. But commerce is commerce: Amprius is just finishing a $30 million fundraising round, and all of that money is coming from Chinese investors. The market for batteries, Sun explains, “is a Chinese business.” His adopted country, he tells me, “needs to wake up.”

与孙先生一样，大卫·维尤是科技行业的资深人士，曾经耗费10年的时间试图创建一家电池厂。与孙先生不同的是，维尤（他说自己的名字与“view”同音）曾经历过失败的痛苦。

2012年，维尤帮助创建的锂电池公司A123 Systems申请破产，令人唏嘘不已。自从10年前创建以来，A123已经筹集了3.5亿美元的私募资金，在美国纳税人配对基金上花费了1.29亿美元，然后在大肆宣扬的2009年首次公开募股中收获了3.9亿美元的资金。

A123在创建时曾经设想，公司会获得来自于通用汽车和其他汽车制造商电动车电池供应合约，不料这些公司大幅削减了生产计划。A123对某些电池的召回也带来了不利影响。在破产之后，评论员批评A123是美国补贴本国清洁能源这类荒唐事件的典型代表。A123电池的大多数业务在2013年被卖给了中国零部件公司万向集团。自从那时开始，中国便开始举全国之力打造全球领先的电池行业。

在遭遇了A123的内爆之后，维尤认为他已经受够了电池业务，但随后又改变了想法。如今，他又开始经营一家电池初创公司，在这个竞争对手林立的行业努力拼搏。然而，这一次他并不打算改进锂电池，而是要取代它。

维尤是Vionx Energy的董事兼前任首席执行官，这是一家位于马萨诸塞州波士顿沃博恩郊区的初创企业。投资者，尤其是风投资本公司，到目前为止已经向Vionx和其前身注资1.3亿美元。Vionx（维尤在谈到这个名称时指出它是一个“很傻的名字，但这些人一直都很傻”，其发音是“Vy-on-ix”）寻求批量生产一种完全不同的电池，一种可以通过盈利的形式储存超长时长的大量可再生能源的电池。Vionx是一群公司的集合，它们致力于开发的电网储存技术在功能和尺寸上并不怎么像电池，而更像是发电厂。

电网储存领域的种子公司并没有像锂电池竞争者那样，在纳米级别摆弄航天材料，而是一块块金属、工业泵和管道，以及一次性往巨大储罐中倾倒数千加仑的化学制品。

Vionx这个特殊的精巧装置被称为“流体电池”。在大规模工作的情况下，它可以提供约10个小时的低成本电量储存，如果储罐更大的话，时长会更长。过去几年中，流体电池已经成为了能源行业类似于笑柄的存在。人们在这一技术规模化方面的种种尝试均以失败告终，不仅是因为这种技术会出现各种小故障，而且还在于由化石燃料支撑的电网并不需要储存多少电能。

维尤现如今坚持认为，两大根本性的改变——更好的技术以及可再生能源价格的大幅降低——意味着过去并非是序曲。太阳能价格在过去10年中下降了70%，再加上最近降价的风能，正在推动对能源储存的需求。与此同时，研究机构Wood Mackenzie称，电网规模存储系统（电池和建立系统所需的各类工具）的价格自从2010年以来已经下降了85%。

严肃的强势选手如今正在投资电网储存技术。Exelon便是其中一家公司，它在2018年的营收达到了359亿美元，在今年的《财富》美国500强榜单上排名第93位，拥有约1000万名客户。公司正在试验大型电池，并将注资电池科技投资公司Volta。Exelon的企业策略高级副总裁克里斯·高尔德表示，公司已经完成了向太阳能的转变，储存业务将得到加强，公司也将从中盈利。

Like Sun, David Vieau is a tech-industry veteran with decade spent trying to build a battery company. Unlike Sun, Vieau (he pronounces it “View”) has experienced the bitterness of defeat.

In 2012, A123 Systems, the lithium-ion company Vieau helped create, filed for bankruptcy, a stunning fall. Since its founding a decade earlier, A123 had raised $350 million in private capital, spent $129 million in matching-grant funds from U.S. taxpayers, and earned about $390 million in a much-ballyhooed 2009 IPO.

A123 had built factories on the assumption it would win contracts to supply batteries for electric cars from GM and other automakers, only to see those companies drastically dial back production plans. An A123 recall of certain batteries didn’t help. In the wake of the bankruptcy, critics pilloried A123 as a poster child for what they deemed the folly of the United States subsidizing a domestic clean-energy industry. Most of A123’s battery business was sold in 2013 to Wanxiang Group, an auto-parts company from China, a country that by then had initiated a national push to build up a globally dominant battery sector.

Chastened by the A123 implosion, Vieau figured he’d had enough of the battery business. Then he changed his mind. Today, he is again steering a battery startup that’s fighting a crowded field. This time, though, he isn’t trying to perfect lithium-ion technology. He’s trying to beat it.

Vieau is a director and former CEO of Vionx Energy, a startup based in the Boston suburb of Woburn, Mass. Investors, primarily venture capital firms, have so far poured about $130 million into Vionx and a predecessor company. Vionx—“stupid name, but they always are,” Vieau tells me of the moniker, which is pronounced “Vy-on-ix”—seeks to scale up a wholly different kind of battery, one that can profitably store vast quantities of renewable energy for many hours. Vionx is one of a gathering stampede of companies developing grid-storage technologies that look less like batteries and more, in both function and size, like power plants.

Rather than tweaking space-age materials at nanoscale, as lithium-ion contenders are doing, grid-storage hopefuls work with slabs of metal, industrial pumps and pipes, and chemical brews dumped thousands of gallons at a time into massive tanks.

Vionx’s specific contraption is called a “flow battery.” If it works at scale, it could provide up to about 10 hours of economic storage—perhaps more, with bigger tanks. Over the years, flow batteries have become something of a joke in the energy world. Myriad efforts to scale them up have flopped, both because the technology has been glitchy and because the fossil-fueled grid hasn’t needed much storage.

Vieau’s bet today is that two fundamental changes—better technology and plummeting renewable-energy prices—mean past isn’t prologue. Solar prices have fallen 70% over the past decade. That, plus newly cheap wind power, is boosting demand for energy storage. At the same time, according to Wood Mackenzie, the price of grid-scale-storage systems—the batteries and the rest of the kit necessary to set them up—has fallen 85% since 2010. (See sidebar at left.)

Serious power players are now investing in grid-storage technologies. One is Exelon, which had 2018 revenue of $35.9 billion, is No. 93 on this year’s Fortune 500, and has about 10 million customers. It is experimenting with big batteries and is writing checks to Volta, the battery-tech investment firm. Chris Gould, Exelon’s senior vice president for corporate strategy, says the company has concluded the shift to solar and storage will intensify and that Exelon can profit from it.

然而事实是：到目前为止，存储提供的电量仅占电网电量的一小部分。Wood Mac¬kenzie称，2018年共计储存了6000兆瓦时的电量。这是全球的数字，但还不到福克兰群岛一年一半的用电量。即便电网存储市场在2017至2024年的经济价值能够按照Wood Mackenzie的预期增长8倍，届时它仍然只是电动汽车电池市场价值的十分之一。

只要存在，电网存储通常就是政府补贴和强制政策的产物。即便政府提供此类支持，电网存储往往会集中出现在特定的地区，也就是那些可再生能源能够发挥最大经济优势的地区，例如加州和夏威夷。这些地区有着尤为充足的日照和风能，而且化石燃料价格异常高昂。

这些在电网上的能量存储容量如今也就只是几大堆锂电池的电量。这对于全世界来说是一个不利的消息，但维尤希望它会成为Vionx的机会。锂电池已经霸占了玩具、表、手机、电动车等移动设备的市场，因为它能够将大量的电力塞入一小块电池中。但如今的电网规模锂电池组建仅能储存几个小时的电量，然后又得再充电。在遇到难以预料的太阳能或风能下滑时，它倒是足以在化石燃料产生的电力回升和输出之前稳定电网。但还远不足以支撑将全球电力系统从化石燃料改为可再生能源。

Reality check: So far, storage provides only a tiny amount of power to the grid. In 2018, according to Wood Mac¬kenzie, there was enough for about 6,000 megawatt-hours of electricity. That’s for the whole world, and it’s less than half the amount of electricity the Falkland Islands use in a year. Even if the grid-storage market achieves the eightfold increase in economic value between 2017 and 2024 that Wood Mackenzie expects, it still will be just one-tenth the value of the electric-car-battery market at that point.

Where it exists, grid storage typically is a creature of government subsidies and mandates. And even given that support, it tends to be concentrated in places, such as California and Hawaii, where renewable energy enjoys maximal economic advantage: places with particularly strong sun and wind and with particularly high fossil-fueled-power prices.

What little energy storage is on the grid today generally amounts to big racks of lithium-ion batteries. That’s a problem for the world—and, Vieau hopes, an opportunity for Vionx. The lithium-ion battery has cornered the market for movable things—toys, watches, phones, electric cars—because it packs a lot of energy into a small package. But today’s grid-scale lithium-ion installations typically can store only a few hours’ worth of juice before they need a recharge. That’s sufficient to stabilize a grid, in the event of an unexpected drop in solar or wind power, until more fossil-fueled electricity can be cranked up and wired out. But it’s nowhere near enough to flip the global power system from fossil fuels to renewables.

Vionx为其技术服务提供了一个可能的答案。在马萨诸塞州的三个由政府资助的测试地点中，Vionx已经部署了装着其流体电池的集装箱原型。它们由一堆堆的泵和管道，以及塑料和金属构成，维尤自己将其称为“Rube Goldberg”。

在马萨诸塞州雪里，Vionx正在等待与一大片中国造太阳能电板相连。在完成安装和运行之后，它应该可以储存可供160个家庭使用的电量。我在一个下午参观了厂址，气温是如此之低，我的手指在记笔记后都麻木了。我亲眼看到，这个系统实在是太大了，与我如今认为锂电池可以塞入口袋，或至少能塞入背包的想法可谓是天壤之别，但维尤不这么认为。他说，Vionx系统需要达到电厂的规模才能行得通。“否则，就只是个花瓶。”

Vionx在位于沃博恩的总部设计和组装了这些系统，只不过总部看起来更像是商业车库而不是实验室。到处都是大的可以灌篮的桶，不过，鉴于里面装的都是电池液，要灌篮的话实在是不明智。

Vionx的工程业务副总裁沙扎德·巴特带我参观了工厂。他是一位汽车专家，在福特汽车工作了很多年，然后来到了A123，随后又加入了Vionx。他用平淡的密歇根口音对我说，锂电池是“储能行业的法拉利，我们这个是卡车。”

Vionx基于由联合技术公司开发和授权的技术。它使用金属钒作为其化学原料能量载体。但初创企业面临两大根本性挑战。一个是供应。钒是一种在全球流通的商品，其价格波动很大。目前的价格很高，不利于Vionx的经济效益。另一个挑战在于需求。促使电网储能市场成形的政府已经出台政策支持锂电池系统，但锂电池通常只能提供4个小时的备用供电时间，而且会出现性能衰减，每过几年就得更换。但Vionx庞大的系统在成本方面具有竞争优势，能够提供10小时的储存电量，而且可以持续20多年的时间，基本上不会衰减。系统庞大的体形会带来更高的初始成本，估计只有寄希望于更多小时的电量销售才能进行分摊。如果购买的Vionx系统只能够提供4小时的备用电量，那么就不亚于购买喷灯来点雪茄。

维尤在波士顿一家他最喜爱的使用白色餐桌布的餐厅享用生蚝、鱼肉晚餐时说：“这是个很大的问题。”这个问题并不陌生。他发现自己陷入了在A123时遭遇的同样困境：他确信储能设备在技术上已经做好了准备，但市场并不需要，至少目前不需要。他喝了口法国霞多丽红酒，然后说：“问题在于，‘以后是否会有那么一天，可再生能源加储能设备会比煤炭更便宜？’如今我依然坚信这一点，正如我在2004年就认为电动汽车会大行其道一样。但问题在于，这一天何时才能到来。”

Vionx contends its technology offers one possible answer. At three government-funded test sites in Massachusetts, Vionx has deployed prototype collections of shipping containers that house its flow batteries. They’re mazes of pumps and pipes, of plastic and metal, that Vieau himself describes as “Rube Goldberg.”

In Shirley, Mass., a Vionx battery is waiting to be hooked up to a field of Chinese-made solar panels. When it’s up and running, it should be able to store enough energy to power about 160 homes. I visit the site on a late afternoon so cold my fingers, as I scribble notes, feel numb. To my eyes, accustomed by now to lithium-ion batteries that would fit in my backpack if not in my pocket, the system looks gargantuan. Not to Vieau. Vionx’s systems, he says, need to be the size of power plants to be viable. “Otherwise, it’s a joke.”

Vionx designs and assembles these systems at its headquarters in Woburn, which looks more like a commercial garage than a lab. Scattered around it are tubs big enough to take a dunk in, though, given that they’re filled with battery acid, that would be unwise.

Shazad Butt, Vionx’s vice president of engineering, gives me a tour. He’s a car guy, having worked for years at Ford Motor before ¬moving to A123 and later to Vionx. The lithium-ion battery is “the Ferrari of storage,” he tells me in his flat Michigan accent. “This being the truck.”

Vionx is based on technology developed by and licensed from United Technologies. It uses vanadium, a metal, as the energy carrier in its chemical soup. But the startup faces two fundamental challenges. One is supply. Vanadium is a global commodity with a fluctuating price. Right now, prices are high, undermining Vionx’s economics. The other problem is demand. Government policies, which shape the grid-storage market, were written to support lithium-ion systems, which typically can provide about four hours of backup and which degrade and need to be replaced every few years. But Vionx’s system is sized to be economically competitive for about 10 hours of storage—and to last 20 years or more with essentially no degradation. The system’s beefiness brings higher initial capital costs that pencil out only when amortized over more hours of electricity sales. Buying a Vionx system to produce four hours of juice would be like buying a blowtorch to light a cigar.

“It’s a big issue,” says Vieau, reflecting over a dinner of oysters and fish at one of his favorite white-¬tablecloth restaurants in Boston. It’s also a familiar one. He finds himself at Vionx today in much the same dilemma that he did at A123: with an energy-storage device that he’s convinced is technologically ready but that the market doesn’t want, at least not yet. “The question is, ‘Can you get to a point where renewable energy plus storage is cheaper than coal?’ And the answer is yes,” he says, sipping a French Chardonnay. “I’m as convinced today that this is a reality as I was in 2004 that the electric car was going to happen. But the question is, when is it going to happen?”

Vionx只不过是众多面临这一困境的电网储能种子选手之一。另一家是Form Energy，这家初创企业部分源自于麻省理工学院材料科学教授蒋业明的实验室。蒋业明曾经与维尤共事，是A123背后的科技参谋。Form Energy筹集了1100万美元，同时最近还获得了美国能源部390万美元的拨款。其他投资者包括比尔·盖茨创建的10亿美元清洁能源基金Breakthrough Energy Ventures、不知名的其他全球亿万富翁，以及石油巨头沙特阿美。

Form Energy希望以较为经济的方式打造能够长久供电的储能设备，不仅仅只是10小时，而是数天或数周的时间。其高管认为有必要让电网上可再生能源的比例达到真正能够替代化石燃料的地步。From Energy意图利用获得的联邦政府拨款打造以硫为关键原料的系统。蒋业明在马萨诸塞州剑桥市充满阳光的办公室聊天时并没有表明Form希望商业化的储能设备是否会使用硫。然而，用词十分小心的他说道，“硫是最具吸引力、有着丰富储量的分子。”如果用非科学的语言来解释，“丰富储量”等同于价格便宜。

离蒋业明办公室仅有数个街区的地方，我拜访了去年从X剥离出来的初创企业Malta。X是谷歌母公司的“臭鼬工厂”。与Form一样，基于斯坦福大学科技的Malta计划使用巨型储罐和泵来储存可供数天或更长时间使用的电力。但Malta的科技是将能量以热量的形式储存，公司认为这种方式更加经济。Malta的投资者包括瑞典热交换设备制造商Breakthrough Energy Ventures，和一家中国可再生能源生产商。整个故事就像一个初创企业纪录片，公司源自于剑桥市的一个共享工作室，冷凝咖啡和康普茶自由弥漫在整个空间，会议室均以历史上伟大的土木工程项目命名。Malta的首席执行官拉姆亚·斯瓦米纳山对我说，她希望公司在大约五年内推出产品。最令她感到担心的是，公司正在为一个当前并不存在的市场设计一款复杂的机械设备。她表示：“这有点像盲人摸象，我们一直在摸索着寻找出路。”

Vionx is but one of many grid-storage hopefuls wrestling with that dilemma. Another is Form Energy, a startup that grew in part out of the laboratory of Yet-Ming Chiang, an MIT materials-science professor who worked with Vieau as the technological mind behind A123. Form has raised about $11 million, plus a recent $3.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. Among its other investors are Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a $1 billion clean-energy-technology fund established by Bill Gates and a who’s who of other global billionaires, and Saudi Aramco, the oil giant.

Form aspires to affordably produce radically long-term energy storage—enough not just for 10 hours but for several days or even weeks, which its executives argue will be necessary to reach percentages of renewable energy on the grid that really will phase out fossil fuels. The federal grant Form won was to build a system using sulfur as a key ingredient. Chiang, chatting in his sunny office in Cambridge, Mass., won’t say whether the storage device Form hopes to commercialize will use sulfur. But, choosing his words carefully, he says that “sulfur appears to be one of the most attractive, earth-abundant molecules.” Nonscientific translation of “earth-abundant”: cheap.

A few blocks from Chiang’s office, I visit Malta, a startup spun out last year from X, the skunkworks of Alphabet, Google’s parent. Like Form, Malta, based on Stanford technology, plans to use giant tanks and pumps to store energy for several days or more. But its technology aspires to store energy as heat, an arrangement it sees as more economic. Malta’s investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a Swedish heat-exchange-equipment maker, and a Chinese renewable-energy producer. As if out of a startup documentary, the company is based in a shared workspace in Cambridge where cold-brew coffee and kombucha flow freely and the conference rooms are named for grand projects of civil engineering throughout history. Ramya Swaminathan, Malta’s chief executive, tells me she hopes to have a product on the market in about five years. What most worries her is that Malta is designing a complex piece of machinery for a market that doesn’t yet exist. “It’s the blind man and the elephant,” she notes. “We’re all feeling our way through.”

我所到访的电网储能初创企业和锂电池公司之间存在着巨大的差别。专注电动车市场的公司看起来更加疲惫，因为市场目前就希望获得更好的锂电池。

回到沃博恩，少数其他电池初创企业距离Vionx并不远。其中一家是Ionic Materials，它的创始人是一位沉默寡言的材料科学家迈克·兹莫曼。那天早上我到访时，他还裹着一条L.L. Bean的抓绒夹克。他在整个职业生涯都在与塑料打交道，包括他在知名的企业科研设备供应商贝尔实验室工作的那段时间。

兹莫曼在近10年前便开始思考如何为电池制作更好的聚合物。他研发出的一种聚合物在室温情况下能够让离子自由流动。这就让以低成本方式制作无需液体电解质的电池成为了可能。兹莫曼说，“固态电池”可以更安全，而且具有更高的能量密度。

Ionic Materials的投资者包括诸多知名的跨国公司，例如雷诺-尼桑-三菱联盟、法国石油公司道达尔以及韩国汽车制造商现代。其他投资者包括自身拥有电池产品的日本巨头日立，以及储能行业基金Volta。

兹莫曼的团队有50人，正在努力减少聚合物的厚度，增强其强度、一致性，并降低其成本。他希望经过一切准备之后，在未来几年推出产品。他坐在一块写着“我们信科学”的挂钟下，用空咖啡杯敲着桌子，并说道，“这真的是太难了，整个过程令人头疼不已。”

There’s a palpable difference between the grid-storage startups and the lithium-ion-battery companies I visit. The firms eyeing the electric-car market seem even more harried—because the market wants a better lithium-ion battery right now.

Back in Woburn, a handful of other battery startups sit not far from Vionx. One is Ionic Materials, the brainchild of Michael Zimmerman, a laconic materials scientist who, on the morning I visit, is wrapped in an L.L. Bean fleece jacket. He has spent his career—including several years at Bell Labs, the famed corporate-research outfit—burrowing away on plastics.

Zimmerman began tinkering with how to make better polymers for batteries nearly a decade ago. He has come up with a polymer that, at room temperature, allows ions to flow freely. That raises the possibility of affordably producing a battery that doesn’t need a liquid electrolyte—a “solid-state” battery, which could be safer and, Zimmerman says, even more energy-dense.

Ionic Materials counts among its investors a potent list of multinationals, including the Renault--Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance; Total, the French oil company; and Hyundai, the Korean automaker. Other investors include Hitachi, the Japanese conglomerate whose products include batteries; and Volta, the energy-storage fund.

Zimmerman’s team of about 50 people is struggling to make the polymer thinner, stronger, more uniform, and cheaper—all in preparation, he hopes, for launching production over the next few years. “This is really hard,” he says, sitting under a wall clock whose face reads, “In Science We Trust,” and tapping the table with his empty coffee cup. “It’s a headbanging process.”

离Ionic Materials不到1英里的地方坐落着Solid Energy Systems，该公司研发的产品在外界看来更加前卫。公司的创始人胡启朝对固态电池的理念不屑一顾。他指出，它的安全性能可能更好，但无法容纳足够的电量。他认为硅阳极也属于类似乏善可陈的技术。33岁的胡启朝成长于中国武汉，于麻省理工学院获得学士学位，并从哈佛大学拿到了博士学位。他正在努力实现商业化的技术被电池研究人员视为圣物：一款可以秒杀锂电池内硅元素的阳极，因为阳极本身由金属锂制作。

多年来，问题一直在于安全性。锂金属电池在充电时有一个特别的特性，因为这类物质在阳极的积累可能会击穿隔板，并导致短路和起火。胡启朝对此并不感到担忧。他坚信，自家电池不会比在售锂电池危险。他将其称为“超越锂离子”的存在，并希望在明年开始面向无人机销售。他对我说：“尽管锂电池汽车也有着火的情况，但人们依然在购买，因此这款电池也是可以接受的。”

胡启朝是个雷厉风行的人。他打算尽快让公司上市，因为时间就是金钱。他对我说：“一旦首家超越锂电池公司上市，它将吸引所有的投资。行业中的每一家企业都想争做第一。”

我们早上7点半在沃博恩开会，胡启朝迟到了几分钟，手里拿着一个大大的旅行杯，里面装着茶水。这两个现象都是可以理解的，因为从他在新泽西的家到这里要开车3.5小时，他每周都得往返一次。

当我在上海见到胡启朝之后去参观Solid Energy正在嘉定修建的工厂时，他穿着皱巴巴的斜纹裤和满是灰尘的工作靴——一周之后仍然是这一套。嘉定这个地区也有着很多首要的汽车制造工厂。多名投资者跟随着胡启朝穿过了整个工厂，那里的空气中满是新刷油漆的味道。这些投资者总共向Solid Energy注入了9000万美元的资金，其中包括上汽集团（总部位于上海的中国最大的汽车制造商）和天齐锂业（全球最大的锂生产商之一，原料来自于矿石）。Solid Energy的其他投资商还包括：通用汽车和SK。

如此众多的大公司一再出现在电池行业的现象凸显了业界寻求技术突破的迫切心态。在SK的韩国园区，也就是策略师黄在尹不愿向我展示的研发楼，黄在尹称他们在专注于改善阴极，并在降低隔板厚度的同时确保其安全性。SK感受到了竞争的热浪，这也是公司为什么会通过支持Solid Energy来为自身赌注加固的原因。黄在尹称，“如果所有的技术都由自己来研发，会存在一定的风险。”

全球最大的汽车制造商之一的大众也同意这一观点。这也是为什么公司去年宣布向另一家硅谷电池初创企业QuantumScape投资1亿美元的原因。这笔投资也扩大了大众与SK和其他大型电池制造商的合约。作为其绿色重构的一部分，大众称到2030年，公司销售的40%的汽车都是电动汽车。大众的采购负责人史蒂芬·索莫表示，“我们现在就必须做出决定，选谁以及在哪里选择合作伙伴，从而确保大量的电池供应能力。这是在短时间内获取如此大量供应能力的唯一方法。”

而这一举措也凸显了电池竞赛的混乱局面及其重要性。尽管各国政府为主导电池产业，保护其国家安全而承诺不断增加国家在这一方面的资金投入，然而事实上，电池行业是一个不断全球化的网络。越来越多的电池公司都拥有来自于不同国家的知识产权、投资者和供应商，其客户更是如此。这些公司的国别，到底是美国、中国还是其他国家，正在变得越来越模糊。从众多方面来看，电池竞赛似乎不大可能按照既定的模式发展。对于消费者和地球来说，这可能是一件非常好的事情。对于决策者、投资者以及化石燃料时代的企业巨头来说，这也大大增加了它们掌控竞赛的难度。（财富中文网）

本文另一版本登载于《财富》杂志2019年6月刊，标题为《制造更好电池的竞赛》。

译者：冯丰

审校：夏林

Less than a mile from Ionic Materials sits Solid Energy Systems, which is taking an arguably more daring approach. Qichao Hu, the company’s founder, scoffs at the notion of a solid-state battery, saying it may be safer but won’t pack enough energy. He considers a silicon anode similarly ho-hum. Hu, just 33, grew up in Wuhan, China, and got his bachelor’s degree from MIT and his Ph.D. from Harvard. He’s committed to commercializing what among battery researchers has long been seen as a Holy Grail: an anode that will dwarf even silicon in its lithium content because the anode itself is made of lithium metal.

The problem, for years, has been safety. Lithium-metal batteries have a particular propensity, during charging, for the buildup of substances on the anode that can pierce the separator, which can create a short circuit and cause a fire. Hu isn’t worried. He’s confident his battery, which he calls “beyond lithium-ion” and hopes to begin selling for drones next year, will be no more dangerous than those now on the market. “You have cars catching on fire, and still people buy them,” he tells me. “So it’s acceptable.”

Hu talks and works fast. He’s intent on taking his company public as soon as possible, because time is money. “Once the first beyond-lithium company goes public, it’s going to suck up all the investment,” he tells me. “Every one of us wants to be the first.”

Hu has arrived at our 7:30 a.m. meeting in Woburn a few minutes late, a massive travel mug of tea in hand. Both are understandable, given that he has just driven 3.5 hours to the office from his home in New Jersey, a commute he makes weekly.

He’s wearing rumpled blue chinos and dusty work boots—and he’s wearing an identical outfit a week later, when I meet Hu in Shanghai to tour the factory that Solid Energy is building there, in Jiading, a district that also houses major auto factories. Trailing Hu as he walks through the site, the air heavy with the fumes of still-fresh paint, are representatives of several of the investors who in total have poured about $90 million into Solid Energy. They include SAIC Motor, China’s largest automaker, which is based in Shanghai; and Tianqi Lithium, a Chinese company that’s one of the world’s largest producers of lithium, a material that is mined. Among Solid Energy’s other investors: GM and SK.

That many big companies pop up repeatedly across the battery-startup landscape indicates how urgent the technological quest has become. Back on SK’s Korea campus, in the R&D buildings that Hwang, the strategist, won’t let me see, they’re focusing, he says, on improving the cathode and on engineering a separator that’s thin but still safe. SK feels the competitive heat, which is why it’s hedging its bets by backing startups such as Solid Energy. “If we develop things all by ourself,” Hwang says, “it has some risk.”

VW, one of the world’s biggest automakers, agrees. That’s why it announced last year it was investing $100 million in yet another Silicon Valley battery startup, called QuantumScape, an investment that augments VW’s contracts with SK and other huge battery makers. As part of its green remaking, VW says 40% of the vehicles it sells will be battery-powered by 2030. “We need to make decisions right now—who and where is the partner—to secure this enormous quantity of batteries,” says Stefan Sommer, VW’s head of procurement. “It’s the only way to ramp up this huge capacity in this short period of time.”

And that points to a messy yet fundamental reality about the battery race. Despite mounting chest-thumping in national capitals that individual countries must dominate it to safeguard their national security, in practice the battery sector is an increasingly global web. More and more battery firms embody an international mix of intellectual property, investors, and suppliers, to say nothing of customers. Whether these firms are American, or Chinese, or something else is less and less clear. In so many ways, the battery race appears unlikely to stay within established lanes. For consumers and the planet, that may be a very good thing. For policymakers, investors, and the corporate giants of the fossil-fuel era, it will make the race increasingly hard to navigate.

A version of this article appears in the June 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “The Race To Build A Better Battery.”