Decades of sexy computing, web and mobile startups have emerged out of Silicon Valley built on the backs of low-cost, commoditized hardware. Some of these startups have gone on to fundamentally change technology and society. A similar thing is starting to happen—though at an early stage—around batteries.
数十年来，随着廉价商品化硬件的普及，电脑、互联网和移动领域的优秀创业公司层出不穷。有些已经开始从根本上改变科技与社会。同样的事情也正在锂离子电池领域发生，虽然这种变革仍然处于早期阶段。
While these batteries, mostly manufactured in bulk in Asian countries, have long been widely used in laptops and cell phones, similar batteries are now beginning to be made at a much higher volume and are becoming cheap enough to start to have an influential effect on both the power and auto industries.
过去，常用于笔记本电脑和手机上的电池大多是由亚洲工厂生产的，现在，类似的电池产品容量开始比过去要高得多，同时价格也变得足够便宜，足以对能源和汽车行业产生重大影响。
Tesla’s battery ambitions
特斯拉的“电池雄心”
Tesla (with its planned huge battery factory under construction outside of Reno, Nevada) is using this low-cost battery thesis as an underlying tenant for its business model, and is probably the most well-known company leading this ‘battery-as-a-platform’ wave. However, there are many other startups, big power companies, Internet companies, solar and clean energy firms, auto makers and battery giants pushing this trend, too.
特斯拉汽车公司正以这种“廉价电池理论”作为商业模式的潜在赢利点，目前其超级电池工厂正在内华达州的里诺市紧张施工。它大概也是引领这股“电池即平台”潮流的知名度最高的公司。但除此之外，还有很多创业公司、大型能源公司、互联网公司、太阳能和清洁能源企业、汽车制造商和电池行业的龙头企业也都在推动这股潮流。
Tesla’s business is as much about creating a battery pack that can be used as efficiently, safely and as low cost as possible for whatever application, as it is about wowing customers with a sexy electric car. Its batteries are being used in many more applications such as the recent announcement of the Powerwall, which stores energy from a rooftop solar panel in a home, and the Powerpack, which can provide a utility with a burst of energy to help it avoid using an expensive and dirty peaker plant (a power plant only used during peak grid times) on a hot Summer afternoon.
在特斯拉的业务版图中，研发一款安全、高效、低成本，同时能够用于几乎任何领域的电池，与制造令消费者目眩神迷的电动汽车的重要性可相提并论。特斯拉的电池目前已经开发出多种用途，比如该公司最近推出的家用电池Powerwall，它可以储存家用太阳能电池板收集的电能。另一款商用电池产品Powerpack，则可以在夏季午后用电高峰时为企业提供储备电力，从而避免使用既昂贵又不环保的峰值电厂（即只在用电高峰时启用的发电厂）。
全文阅读>>>
|
