電力汽車發展瓶頸 電池技術革新依然遙遙無期

If you were to track the upgrades for your Apple iPhone or Toyota Prius from their introduction to today, you will see a familiar arc in the technology industry: performance multiplies, the product is refined, jobs are created, even entire industries are reworked.

如果回顧一下蘋果公司(Apple)的iPhone或豐田(Toyota)普銳斯（Prius）混合動力車從最初型號到現有版本的發展過程，人們會發現技術行業一個常見的軌跡：性能翻倍提升，產品更精緻，創造了無數就業崗位，甚至顛覆了整個行業。

Consider, for example, that the iPhone’s theoretical maximum download speed on cellular networks went from 1 megabyte per second for the 2007 “2G” iPhone to 300 mbps for today’s 5s model. Its display more than doubled in pixel density, its camera transformed from cheap afterthought to serious photography tool, and its software capabilities are far more robust than when the device was introduced. (Even the App Store is a second-generation feature.)

例如，iPhone在蜂窩網絡中最大的理論下載速度已從2007年“2G”iPhone的1兆字節/秒上升至如今5s型號的300兆字節/秒。其顯示屏的像素密度增加了一倍多，攝像頭已從廉價的配件轉變爲一種實用的照相工具，而且其軟件能力要比iPhone誕生之時強大太多太多。（即便是蘋果應用商店如今也已發展到第二代了。）

Similarly, Toyota’s Prius hybrid car evolved from a neighborhood oddity (and celebrity eco-accessory) in 2000 to a best-selling vehicle in Japan and California. The engine in today’s model is 20 percent lighter (and offers 20 percent more total horsepower) than the original. Its distance-per-charge is longer. Without the Prius, it can be argued, there would be no Tesla.

同樣，豐田的普銳斯混合動力車從2000年的鄰家怪胎（以及明星彰顯其環保態度的配飾）搖身一變爲日本和加州最暢銷的交通工具。當前車型引擎的重量較最初型號輕了20%（總功率增加了20%），而且單次充電後行駛的里程更長。有人會說，沒有普銳斯，就不會有如今的特斯拉電動車（Tesla）。

There’s is one component of all of these things that hasn’t changed in that time period: the lithium-ion battery. Whether in the iPhone, the Prius, and even the Tesla Model S, the Li-ion battery is essentially made of the same stuff as those first introduced by Sony in 1991. That’s not to say that innovation hasn’t happened around them, of course. Device-makers have become better at charging them, cooling them, and controlling how much power they draw into our phones, cars, laptops, and USB gadgets. But they’re still largely the same battery. Even Tesla’s $5 billion plans for a “giga”-sized battery factory involve the manufacture of—you guessed it—lithium-ion packs.

然而在這些設備中，有一個組件這些年來一直沒有變化，那就是鋰離子電池。不管是在iPhone，還是普銳斯，甚至是特斯拉S車型，鋰電池用的還是1991年索尼公司(Sony)推出這一產品時所用的材料。當然，這並不是說人們沒有針對這種電池進行過創新。設備製造商在充電效率、冷卻和控制進入手機、汽車、筆記本和USB元件的電流流量方面做得越來越好，但這些電池的芯卻沒有怎麼換過。即便是特斯拉計劃建造的50億美元超大型電池生產廠生產的仍是（如你所料）鋰電池組。

Upon further investigation, there is little consensus on what kind of battery technology may replace lithium ion. There aren’t even rumors.

進一步的調查發現，人們對於哪一種電池技術可能能夠取代鋰電池仍是衆說紛紜，甚至連這方面的謠言都是寥寥無幾。

To find out why, Fortune posed a simple question to five established researchers working on next-generation batteries, a behavioral economist, and a battery industry executive: Why is battery technology moving so much slower than hardware?

爲探究其原因，《財富》(Fortune)向致力於開發下一代電池的5名知名研究人員、一名行爲經濟學家和一名電池行業高管提出了一個簡單的問題：爲什麼電池技術的發展速度要比硬件慢如此之多？

As you’ll soon find out, the answer is one part chemistry, one part psychology, and two parts the answer to a counter-question: Who really wants to be the first to drive with a new type of battery that hasn’t benefited from two decades of development?

接下來你便會發現，答案的一成與化學有關，一成與心理學有關，而兩成則與上述問題的反問有關：對於一項未經過二十年發展的新電池技術，一旦裝上汽車，誰想成爲首位駕駛該車的人？

Today’s battery tech: dense, hot, tricky

當今的電池技術：密度大、發熱量大、問題多

Lithium-ion battery technology is in many ways the workhorse of portable power.

鋰離子電池技術在很多方面都是移動電源的主力軍。

Lithium’s atomic number is three, which, if you remember middle-school chemistry, means that it has three protons, is very lightweight, and can be packed more densely than any element other than hydrogen or helium. Lithium is a known quantity to chemists, says Carlo Segre, professor of physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and we mostly understand how it flows inside a battery.

鋰的原子量是3，如果你還記得中學化學的話，這意味着它有三個質子，非常輕，是除了氫和氦之外單位體積可填充密度最高的元素。芝加哥伊利諾伊州理工大學(Illinois Institute of Technology)物理學教授卡洛o塞格雷表示，鋰的物理量爲化學家們所熟知，我們幾乎掌握了鋰離子在電池中流動的方式。

“I think it really boils down to, the reason lithium is so good, is that it’s very light, and you can get it through a membrane very easily,” Segre says. “And the potential difference (voltage) you can generate is one of the highest we know.”

塞格雷說，“我認爲歸根結底，鋰如此好的原因在於，它非常輕，而且能夠輕易地穿透隔離膜。而且其產生的電壓是已知材料中最高的之一。”

It’s not just lithium that goes into a Li-ion battery. The element gets mixed with magnesium (for personal gadgets and vehicles), iron phosphate (for heavy-duty work), and other metals. That mixture flows into another material to create voltage: graphite, titanium solutions, silicon, and different forms of carbon, depending. In most non-industrial devices used in relatively safe conditions, you have lithium manganese oxide flowing into graphite, because those materials are cheap, relatively safe, and dense.

鋰並不是鋰電池裏的唯一材料，其中還混有錳（個人電子產品和交通工具）、磷酸鐵（高強度工作）和其他金屬。爲了產生電壓，這種混合物會流經另一種材料：石墨、鈦溶液、硅和不同形式的碳（依情況而定）。對於大多數在相對安全的環境中所使用的非工業設備來說，流經石墨的是鋰錳氧化物，因爲這種材料價格低廉，相對安全，而且密度高。

But there are quite a few problems with the old faithful. The process generates heat in a dense space, requiring some kind of cooling system. (A tremendous amount of work went into Tesla’s car-length liquid cooling rig, for example.) The electrolyte that conducts lithium’s flow adds weight. The cells lose their capacity over time. Charging the battery, which makes the lithium flow back, could be quicker. And though it’s rare, we have seen that tightly packed batteries full of fluids, made very hot, can sometimes puncture or explode.

但是這一老產品也存在一些問題。這一進程會在一個高密度空間內產生熱量，需要採取一些冷卻措施。（例如，與特斯拉車身長度相當的液態冷卻設備擔負了大量的冷卻工作。）傳導鋰離子的電解液增加了電池的重量。電芯的容量在一段時間後就會下降。充電會讓鋰離子迴流，但這一進程可以更快一些。充滿電解質的高密度鋰電池在發熱量超過一定程度之後有時會爆漿或爆炸，雖然這一情況很少見。

What we might use next: air

今後我們可能會使用空氣

Chandrasekhar “Spike” Narayan, director of science and technology at IBM Research, is part of the Battery 500 Project. The goal is to get batteries to power a car of average cost on a 500-mile trip. IBM won’t build the batteries itself, but will partner with manufacturing and consumer companies to get them into the wild.

IBM研究院(IBM Research)科技部主任錢德拉塞卡爾o納拉延是電池500項目(Battery 500 Project)的成員。該項目的目標是，開發能夠提供行駛500英里路程所需電量的電池。IBM公司自身並不會生產電池，而是與消費類產品製造商開展合作，將這一技術帶到現實中。

After years of work, Narayan sees a future for lithium-air technology, which replaces graphite and other metals with oxygen, refreshed by the car itself. Such batteries could be lighter, safer, and last far longer. But working with new mixtures, pushing them into new materials, and seeing how safe they are over thousands of charge cycles takes a very, very long time.

經過多年的努力之後，納拉延看到了鋰-空氣技術的前景，即用汽車自身補給的氧氣取代石墨和其他的金屬。這類電池可以變得更輕，更安全，而且供電時間也更長。但是研發新的混合物，將它們製成新材料，並檢測其在數千輛汽車上的安全性，需要花費非常漫長的時間。

“There is no guiding principle that suggests you get improvement from year to year,” Narayan says. “There is no magic knob you can turn. The only way we can get to that kind of paradigm is a completely new kind of chemistry, and innovation doesn’t work like that.”

納拉延說：“目前沒有一個指導性原則顯示，我們能夠年復一年地獲得進步，也沒有捷徑可以走。要得到這種範式，唯有創建一種全新的化學反應，而這一點並非創新所能企及的。”

Currently, lithium-air batteries have to overcome problems with blockages, internal rust, and stability. Even if air batteries are smoothed into a viable product, Narayan sees a future where battery technology is no longer one-size-fits all. “It may not be a great technology for power grid storage, for example. Especially when there is a size requirement, we may see differentiation among battery types soon.”

當前，鋰-空氣電池必須克服堵塞、內部腐蝕和穩定性問題。即便空氣電池能夠順利地演變爲一種可行產品，納拉延認爲，在今後，電池技術將不再是“通用型”。“例如，對於電網存儲來說，它或許不是什麼好技術。尤其是有尺寸要求的行業，我們或許很快將看到多種多樣的電池類型。”

What we can do in the meantime: get cheaper

當前我們能做些什麼：降低價格

Kevin Bai and Xuan “Joe” Zhou at Kettering University work in labs and in battery industry research, but they talk like car shoppers than laboratory wonks. With the hybrid vehicles of today, Zhou notes, there are lots of trade-offs, in several ways.

凱特林大學（Kettering University）的凱文o白和周軒（音譯）在實驗室中從事電池行業研究，但他們的談吐更像是買車人而不是實驗室的書呆子。周軒表示，現今的混合動力車存在多方面的優缺點。

“Right now [hybrid] batteries are selling for $500 to $600 per kilowatt hour, but they should be $200,” Zhou says. “And every dollar you spend in the battery is another dollar in cooling. If the car needs a $6,000 battery, it’s a $6,000 cooling system.” What’s more, Bai notes, the size of such a battery eats up trunk or seating space. The scientists agree that an electric vehicle should feel like less of a financial albatross.

周軒說：“目前，混合動力的售價是每千瓦時500-600美元，但合理的價格應該是200美元。而且冷卻系統的價格跟電池的價格是差不多的。如果汽車需要6,000美元的電池，那麼就需要6,000美元的冷卻系統。”此外，凱文o白指出，這類電池的體積蠶食了本應屬於後備箱或乘坐的空間。兩位科學家也認爲，電動汽車不應給人們帶來沉重的財務負擔。

But it’s anybody’s guess as to which current materials may work out to have the safest, coolest, and most lightweight mix, while still selling for less than today’s offerings.

但是誰也不知道，哪些現有材料才能構造出最安全、發熱量最低和重量最輕的電池混合材料，而且其價格要比現有的產品便宜。

Zinc-air batteries, used in hearing aids today, are seeing renewed interest, especially given zinc’s easy availability. The same goes for sodium-air, which are cheaper and easier to assemble, if not as potentially powerful as lithium-air. There are also attempts to replace the graphite and carbon solids in batteries with silicon, though silicon isn’t cheap. Or we might just improve the cost and performance of the lithium-iron batteries in our drills and motorcycles in the meantime.

現今在助聽領域使用的鋅-空氣電池重新激起了人們的興趣，而且尤爲重要的一點在於，鋅很容易獲取。鈉-空氣電池也是一樣，成本更低，而且組裝起來更容易，只是潛在功率趕不上鋰-空氣電池。人們還嘗試過用硅來取代石墨和固體碳，但是硅並不便宜。或者，我們可以只專注於改善實驗室和摩托車使用的鋰-鐵電池的成本和性能。

In many ways, Bai says, building larger battery plants, better battery management tools, and a smarter power grid for charging is going to bear greater fruit than waiting on one or another chemical combo to pay off.

凱文o白表示，建造更大規模的電池廠、開發更好的電池管理工具以及更加智能的充電電網在很多方面要比等待一兩項新化合物獲得成功更爲實在。

“We are actually very far away from a brand-new battery for vehicles,” Bai says. “The automotive industry, they must feel they can stand behind 10 years of testing before they are comfortable trying a new material.” It will be at least 2020, he says, before you see zinc-air batteries in the first four-wheeled vehicles–and then a long while more before that battery technology matures.

凱文o白說：“我們實際上離使用全新電池的交通工具還很遠很遠。只有在新材料經過10年的測試之後，汽車行業才能放心使用新材料。”他表示，人們至少要等到2020年才能看見使用鋅-空氣電池的四輪車輛，然後，人們需要更長的時間才能看到這一電池技術的成熟。

What we can do in the future: nano-engineer materials

未來我們能做什麼：納米工程材料

Don’t give up on lithium-ion just yet, says Partha Mukherjee, a professor at Texas A&M University and leader in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Nanoengineering for Energy and Sustainability group. We might still be using it, but with materials that have gained some new powers in the lab.

德克薩斯農工大學（A&M University）教授、美國機械工程師協會（American Society of Mechanical Engineers）能源和可持續性納米工程小組成員帕沙o穆克荷吉表示，現在還沒到放棄鋰離子電池的時候。我們可能仍會用它，但它將與我們在實驗室中獲得新能力的材料混合使用。

Nanoengineers might dig into the molecular structure of battery materials to speed up how they transfer more voltage per cell. There might be a change in the way the electrolyte conveys lithium ions so that “traffic jams” don’t occur and charging is much faster. You could design a thinner, stronger, but still flexible membrane for batteries that allows for swelling under heat but never breaks. Or go for broke and develop a material that absorbs more lithium ions than carbon, air, or any material we know.

納米工程師可能會對電池材料的分子結構進行深入研究，以加速電池單元電壓的產生速度，並提升其轉換效率。電解質攜帶鋰離子的方式可能會發生改變，以杜絕“交通擁堵現象”，並縮短充電時間。人們可能會設計出更薄、更強大但伸縮依然自如的電池膜，這樣，即便電池受熱膨脹，也不會爆漿。或者一心一意開發能夠比碳、空氣或任何已知材料吸附更多鋰離子的材料。

“The fundamental question we need to ask is, ‘How about starting from the bottom up?” Mukherjee says. “That is the mesoscale paradigm that must be addressed. Can we make materials that are more tolerant of what we need batteries to do?”

穆克荷吉說：“我們需要詢問的最根本的問題在於，‘是否可以從頭再來？’。這就是必須解決的中尺度模型。我們是否能增加材料的寬容度，以滿足我們對於電池的訴求？”

In the meantime: get perspective

與此同時：着眼於長遠

A year ago Segre, of the Illinois Institute of Technology, received a $3.4 million prize from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a “flow battery” for car applications. Flow batteries store their active chemicals in external tanks and pass it through the battery structure itself. Segre’s work focuses on developing a liquid that is reactive and powerful enough to compensate for the liquid weight trade-off.

一年前，伊利諾伊理工大學的塞格雷從美國能源部獲得了340萬美元的獎金，用於開發汽車用“流體電池”。流體電池將其活性化合物儲存在外部儲罐中，然後流經電池結構內部。塞格雷的工作專注於開發具有足夠活性和能量的液體介質，以抵消液體的重量劣勢。

A flow battery might work in cars and power grid applications, but it will never work for a phone or laptop. Segre, like most researchers, knows it will be a long series of experiments until researchers hit upon a few different material combinations for batteries. In the meantime, “It’s especially frustrating for most of us because the battery dies, the capacity drops, after a couple years, while the electronics it powers could go on and on.”

流體電池或許可以應用於汽車和電網，但卻無法適用於手機或筆記本。與其他的研究人員一樣，塞格雷深知，這將是一個漫長的實驗過程，除非研究人員能夠在偶然間發現幾種能用於電池的不同材料組合。與此同時，“對於大多數人來說，這是一件尤爲痛苦的事情，因爲幾年過後，電量沒了，容量也下降了，然而電池供電的電子產品卻在不斷前進。”

For decades, we lived within Moore’s Law, which predicted that the number of transistors packed into a processor would double every two years, providing a steady gallop of technology improvement. We are now approaching a point at which transistors are near atomic-scale, chips can’t fit many more processors, and we’re unhappy with having the same kinds of batteries in our devices.

過去幾十年中，我們一直生活在摩爾定律（Moore's Law）當中。根據該定律，處理器中的晶體管數量每兩年會翻一番，而這也說明了技術進步的穩定性。我們目前所面臨的局勢是，晶體管尺寸已接近原子水平，芯片無法容納更多的處理器，而且我們對設備中一成不變的電池感到不滿。

In other words, when it comes to physics, there’s no app for that. Which can be a bitter pill for tech-savvy consumers to swallow as they become acclimated to regular advancements in every other part of their electronic devices, says Michal Ann Strahilevitz, a professor of marketing at Golden Gate University.

換句話來說，物理中是沒有應用程序的。金門大學（Golden Gate University）市場營銷教授米蓋爾o安o斯特拉赫維茨表示，這對於深諳技術的消費者來說可能有點難以接受，因爲他們已經習慣了電子設備每一部件都會定期改良。

“Adapting to upgrades is easy, and the more you are upgraded, the more you expect further upgrades,” Strahilevitz says. “In a world where [gadgets] keep getting better and more efficient, we feel we have a right to that. We ask, ‘Why can’t they be more wonderful than this?'”

斯特拉赫維茨說：“適應升級很容易，得到的升級越多，對進一步升級的期望也就越大。在這個電子產品越來越好，性能越來越高的世界中，我們覺得這是我們應享有的權利。我們會問，‘爲什麼電池不能變得更好呢？’”