The race is launched to build a better battery

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "To learn more about the battery industry, read "Cook a Jellyroll: how are batteries made?. ""data-reactid =" 59 ">To learn more about the battery industry, read "Cooking a 'Jellyroll': How are the batteries made?"

Even Jeffrey Chamberlain, a battery geek, finds today's change to be breathtaking. For years, he worked at the Argonne National Laboratory, leading one of the US government's major battery research efforts. He now runs a Chicago-based venture capital fund, Volta Energy Technologies, which takes money from companies in the energy, petroleum and other companies and invests. in start-up companies with energy storage technology. The companies concluded that they had to protect themselves, says Chamberlain, because "what renewable energy represents for these companies is a massive destruction." China said a leading battery sector was a strategic national priority, offering incentives to work done. "What does that imply?" Asks Chamberlain. "Are they the new Saudi Arabia of batteries?"

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Billions of unprecedented dollars Dollars are invested in research and development of batteries, making batteries today the type of technological target that semiconductors were a generation ago. A particularly fast flow is pouring into startups, each promising more brutally than the other having deciphered the code of the black box with energy storage. This money comes from multinationals struggling for technology solutions, venture capitalists looking for the next big feat and various billionaires who claim to want to save the planet. And it comes from both sides of the Pacific. "Data-reactid =" 61 ">Billions of unprecedented dollars Dollars are invested in research and development of batteries, making batteries today the type of technological target that semiconductors were a generation ago. A particularly fast flow is pouring into startups, each promising more brutally than the other having deciphered the code of the black box with energy storage. This money comes from multinationals struggling for technology solutions, venture capitalists looking for the next big feat and various billionaires who claim to want to save the planet. And it comes from both sides of the Pacific.

Some startups will win big; many others will implode. Be that as it may, they are the spearhead of the battery race – the group in which the scrambles are the most fierce, the daring to the poster, and the long-term breakthroughs are the most likely to develop. They are also more talkative than big players about what they do; that goes without saying because they are more hungry to invest.

The world race for batteries today has two main rounds. One of the already well-advanced projects is electric car batteries, whose market value, Wood Mackenzie's energy data company projects, will grow from $ 13 billion in 2017 to $ 41 billion in 2024. This market has prompted Eon Musk's Tesla to build a huge battery factory – what Tesla calls a "gigafactory" – in Nevada. It's the market that drives all global automakers – embarrassed by Tesla in the electric car market and determined not to be bothered – to place massive orders at SK and other major battery producers, almost all of them based in Asia. It also encourages them to invest in promising startups.

The other heat source, which has just started, is electric grid batteries: plant-sized devices designed to store huge amounts of energy, potentially for days or even weeks, at a time. Such technology could allow for an epic transition between fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas, that modify the climate but can be unleashed at will, in the sun and wind, which are clean but do not always shine or shine. not always. stroke. Their market remains nascent and largely dependent on government subsidies – that is, it is risky and everybody wins. A band of fanatical technologists, funded by Saudi Aramco, invested in a fund guaranteed by Bill Gates and invested in considerable funds, strive to market their long-term energy storage devices.

The issue of these two rounds is more than the fate of some entrepreneurs and their sponsors. The future of the global economy is at stake. Since Benjamin Franklin flew the key of a kite during a thunderstorm, electricity has proved difficult to store. in large quantities. That's why cars always run on oil, which can be easily stored in tanks. That's why transmission lines are always needed to transport electricity hundreds or even thousands of kilometers from its place of production to its place of consumption. And that's why the vast majority of electricity is still produced by burning fossil fuels that, despite all their environmental drawbacks, are flawlessly reliable. Press a switch briefly, the system comes back to life and the lights come on.

If electricity could be stored in large quantities at low cost, radical changes could ensue. The electric car, which has fewer parts than a gasoline vehicle and so should, on a large scale, be cheaper to manufacture, could overshadow the internal combustion engine. Sunlight could be stored in the form of electricity during the day and wind energy during the night, and renewable energies could, at an acceptable cost, behave as a constant source of energy rather than intermittent. Given that transportation and electricity together account for about 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, humanity's carbon production – which, according to scientists, will have to be virtually zero until mid-century. century to avoid a particularly dangerous climate change – could begin to fall.

This would probably result in a reorganization of winners and economic losers, with established players in search of new business models. Automakers should retool or die. Oil companies should reinvent themselves, at least in large part, as renewable energy suppliers, or lose their memory. Utilities should switch to a new decentralized enterprise in which they operate a considerable number of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. In other words, figuring out how to store electricity in an economical way could bypass the global economy and then rewire it.

Can this be done? I've been burning a lot of fossil fuel this spring trying to find out. I have traveled northern California and the whole world. In Silicon Valley, Boston, China and Korea, I discovered start-ups that were making their way and companies struggling not to collapse. All were nervous, although some were more open than others on this topic. Energy storage is now the mother of all sparkling markets.

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "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 anode; a substance that connects them, called electrolyte, which is usually a liquid; and a membrane, called a separator, which prevents certain particles from moving from one electrode to the other in a "short circuit", which could lead to a fire. A too thin separator was involved in a series of fires in 2016 on some Samsung phones. "Data-reactid =" 101 ">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 anode; a substance that connects them, called electrolyte, which is usually a liquid; and a membrane, called a separator, which prevents certain particles from moving from one electrode to the other in a "short circuit", which could lead to a fire. A too thin separator was involved in a series of fires in 2016 on some Samsung phones.

When a battery powers a device, chemical reactions inside break down atoms into positively charged particles, called ions, and negatively charged particles, called electrons. 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, feeding it.

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

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One of the major goals of battery research is to maximize "energy density" – the amount of energy that can be transferred to a battery of a given volume or weight. This depends largely on the number of ions his anode can hold; the more ions there are, the more the battery will have electrons for the device to continue to work. This primacy of ions and anode frames two crucial realities of the quest for drums today.

The first is that virtually all today's batteries draw their ions from the same element: lithium. Lithium is a particularly "light" element, which means that its ions are particularly small, which means that a particularly large number of them can be filled in an anode. Thus, most of today's electrical devices, from iPhones to Teslas, are powered by "lithium-ion" batteries.

The other reality is that a crucial part of the battery quest today is to build a better anode: an anode capable of containing particularly large amounts of lithium ions.

Amprius, a young company founded about ten years ago with headquarters in Silicon Valley, accounts for most of its activities in China, as well as investors in the two countries that have collectively invested about $ 140 million. dollars in society. They include Trident Capital and Kleiner Perkins, two venture capital firms in Silicon Valley; SAIF Partners, a Chinese private equity firm; and the Wuxi Industry Development Group, a state-owned investment company, located in Wuxi, the Chinese city in which Amprius owns a major battery plant. Unlike many startups, Amprius already produces batteries and sells them to leading customers. Amprius generated about $ 50 million in revenue last year, said Kang Sun, general manager of the company. But its technology remains buggy and its future is hardly assured. "We are not out of the wood yet," he says.

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Sun is a passionate about the technology industry He promotes He grew up in China, got his doctorate at Brown, and then was vice president of Honeywell, then returned to China to help build JA Solar, one of the largest solar panel manufacturers in the world. He lives today near San Francisco, drives a Tesla and apparently circulates around the world all the time. "Data-reactid =" 128 "> Sun is a technology enthusiast who favors hair styling, molded shirts and outspoken.He grew up He earned his PhD at Brown, was vice president of Honeywell, Then went back to China to help build JA Solar, one of the world's largest solar panel manufacturers.San Francisco, drove a Tesla and apparently constantly flies around the world.

His current position at the head of a transpacific telecommunications company is, he said, "the most difficult job I've had in my life". Over the hours I spent with him, a phrase escaped him, whispered almost unconsciously. as in a mantra: "not easy". As in: "Battery technology is not easy."

The source of his lamentation: the exasperating madness of the super-anode.

The anodes of most lithium-ion batteries are made of graphite, a cheap and plentiful substance. Amprius, like many other startups, is trying to manufacture silicon anodes that theoretically can hold up to ten times more lithium ions than graphite. "Theoretically" is a huge warning. The advantage of silicon as a lithium-ion thesaurizer also has a major disadvantage: when the silicon is stuffed with huge lithium ions, it swells. This swelling can crack the material of the anode, greatly shortening the life of a supposed super-battery.

More than a decade ago, Yi Cui, professor of materials science at Stanford, devised a new technique to prevent the swelling of silicon in an anode. It uses a silicon structure that, at the nanoscale, looks like a single hair of an upturned brush. Laboratory experiments have proven that each of them being stuffed with lithium ions, it has enough space to inflate without bumping into another hair and cracking the anode. Amprius is the company created to market the concept, called "silicon nanowire".

Sun quickly joined the group as CEO, thinking that he would spend a few years building Amprius, then return it or make it public at great profit. A decade later, he is still in the hot seat. "We have to go up 30 times bigger," he says. "Otherwise, we can not make money."

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Intellectual pole of Amprius, In Sunnyvale, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, there is a bunker-like suite in an industrial park. The walls are scuffed, the furniture looks rented, even if it is not the case, and one day, during my visit, the floor under the urinals of men's toilets is lined with leaves of cardboard covered with stains. This summer, Amprius moves to another office. he is moving because his lease has not been renewed, but his rent will be reduced. Money at Amprius is not spent on the comfort of the creature. These are devoted to science and manufacturing. "Data-reactid =" 134 ">Intellectual pole of Amprius, In Sunnyvale, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, there is a bunker-like suite in an industrial park. The walls are scuffed, the furniture looks rented, even if it is not the case, and one day, during my visit, the floor under the urinals of men's toilets is lined with leaves of cardboard covered with stains. This summer, Amprius moves to another office. he is moving because his lease has not been renewed, but his rent will be reduced. Money at Amprius is not spent on the comfort of the creature. It is spent on science and manufacturing.

The jewel of Amprius is in a Sunnyvale office lab: a one-piece machine, designed by Amprius and built in Europe to its specifications, that applies a mixture of silane gas and other gases to a metal substrate; the resulting chemical reaction creates silicon nanowires. Visible through a machine peephole of about the diameter of a silver dollar, the process of applying gas is a purple haze. Everything is complex and delicate: the composition of gases; the pressure and temperature at which they are shot; the rate at which the substrate moves along the conveyor belt inside the machine.

Once the anode material is removed from the machine, it contains about 200,000 silicon nanowires per square centimeter per side. It is cut up and sent to a series of small laboratories where workers in white coats and blue surgical masks assemble the batteries essentially by hand. Amprius indicates that the best of these batteries have an energy density about 60% higher than that of conventional lithium-ion batteries. One of the drawbacks is that they do not support as many discharges and loads as conventional batteries, which qu'Amprius seeks to improve.

Amprius' state-of-the-art batteries piqued the interest of the US military, which tests them for use in clothing soldiers could wear to power the equipment they use in the field. The biggest buyer of batteries is by far Airbus. As part of a program dubbed Zephyr, Airbus tests them on unmanned aircraft, called high-altitude pseudo-satellites. Last December, the two companies announced that one of the Airbus vehicles running on Amprius batteries had flown more than 25 days, "setting a new record of endurance and altitude for stratospheric flight ".

For Sun, the Airbus contract is both a lifeline and a yellow flag. "We charge them an incredible price" for the batteries, he says. "This kind of price is not sustainable." In other words, the stacks made in Sunnyvale look like costumes sewn on Savile Row: custom-made, expensive and therefore exposed. "If she can not evolve," says Sun about the California operation, "she will die."

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<p class = "canvas-atom-canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Airbus has compelling reasons to pay the price of the product. Amprius, he tries to outdo his rivals, including Boeing, developing and marketing both a cheaper alternative to satellites and a viable fleet of electric powered air taxis. "There are hundreds of startups," says Mark Cousin, general manager of Airbus, an innovation center created by the company in Sunnyvale, not far from Amprius, according to Mark Cousin. But, apart from Amprius, "we have not found any evidence that one of these companies is about to propose anything that could potentially be mature enough to be integrated into a product in the short and medium term." Data-reactid = "175"> Airbus has compelling reasons to pay the price of Amprius. It is trying to outdo its rivals, including Boeing, by developing and marketing both a cheaper alternative to satellites and a viable fleet of electric powered air taxis. Mark Cousin, chief executive of A3 by Airbus, an innovation center created by the company in Sunnyvale, not far from Amprius, said Mark Cousin, CEO of Startups. I have not seen any evidence that one or the other of these companies is about to propose something that could potentially be mature enough to be integrated into a short and medium product. term. "

In China, Amprius is pursuing a larger market. In Nanjing, the southern metropolis in which Sun grew up, Amprius has another laboratory where it develops an anode material less rarefied than its silicon-nanowire technology, but still more advanced than the industry standard. It is a nanoscale structure of silicon manufactured in powder form, then combined with a traditional graphite powder. The resulting graphite-silicon mixture is conveyed to a conventional battery plant. This modest increase in silicon generally increases the energy density of a battery by up to 15% compared to a traditional lithium-ion battery. This is much less than the improvement over the silicon-nanowire material, but it is drastically cheaper.

The morning of my visit to Nanjing, dozens of bags of silicon powder are stacked on a metal shelf. For my untrained eye, they look like ground coffee, differing only in their shade of brown. Some evoke French roast; from others, a lighter blend. Amprius supplies the hardware to various US, European, Japanese, Korean and Chinese manufacturers for testing purposes. It also transports the powder to a factory located near Wuxi, built for Amprius in 2016.

When I visit the Wuxi factory, she makes batteries for children's smart watches and consumer batteries. The factory also manufactures batteries for a Chinese dronemaker. Chuanxin Zhai, a scientist who was sent for a walk, says he is particularly proud of the plant that recently won a contract for watch batteries. This was the case after fierce competition on energy density with Amperex Technology Ltd., or ATL, a Chinese company that is one of the largest battery manufacturers in the world. Zhai mentions another customer for whom the Wuxi factory has manufactured batteries: a company that uses them to make oxygen supply machines in cold weather. This company, he says, sells the machines to the Chinese military for medical purposes in Tibet.

This suggests the sensitivities faced by many battery companies with footprints in the United States and China. In the midst of tensions between the two countries, Sun says, Amprius must pay attention to who he accepts as investors and customers. C’est un citoyen américain qui dit préférer vivre aux États-Unis. Mais le commerce est le commerce: Amprius vient de terminer une levée de fonds de 30 millions de dollars, et tout cet argent provient d&#39;investisseurs chinois. Le marché des batteries, explique Sun, "est une entreprise chinoise." Son pays d&#39;adoption, me dit-il, "doit se réveiller".

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Comme le soleil, David Vieau est un vétéran de l’industrie de la technologie. Il a passé 10 ans à essayer de créer une entreprise de batteries. Contrairement à Sun, Vieau (il dit «View») a connu l&#39;amertume de la défaite. "Data-reactid =" 180 ">Comme le soleil, David Vieau est un vétéran de l’industrie de la technologie. Il a passé 10 ans à essayer de créer une entreprise de batteries. Contrairement à Sun, Vieau (il dit «View») a connu l&#39;amertume de la défaite.

En 2012, la société de lithium-ion Vieau, A123 Systems, a contribué à créer, en faillite, une chute stupéfiante. Depuis sa création dix ans plus tôt, A123 avait réuni 350 millions de dollars de capitaux privés, dépensé 129 millions de dollars en fonds de contrepartie auprès de contribuables américains et gagné environ 390 millions de dollars grâce à un premier appel public à l&#39;épargne réalisé en 2009.

<p class = "toile-atome toile-texte Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "A123 avait construit des usines sur l&#39;hypothèse où il gagnerait. contrats de fourniture de batteries pour voitures électriques GM et d’autres constructeurs automobiles, seulement pour voir ces entreprises réduire considérablement leurs plans de production. Un rappel de certaines batteries A123 n’a pas aidé. À la suite de la faillite, les critiques ont mis au pilori A123 en tant qu&#39;enfant de tête pour ce qu&#39;ils considéraient comme la folie des États-Unis de subventionner une industrie nationale d&#39;énergie propre. La majeure partie du secteur des batteries d’A123 a été vendue en 2013 au groupe Wanxiang, une entreprise chinoise de pièces détachées pour automobiles, qui avait alors lancé une campagne nationale visant à créer un secteur des batteries dominant à l’échelle mondiale. "Data-reactid =" 182 "> A123 avaient construit des usines en supposant gagner des contrats pour la fourniture de batteries pour voitures électriques de GM et d’autres constructeurs automobiles, pour ensuite voir ces entreprises réorienter radicalement leurs plans de production. Un rappel de certaines batteries par A123 n’aidait en rien. critiques ont critiqué A123 en tant qu&#39;enfant d&#39;affiche pour ce qu&#39;ils considéraient comme la folie des États-Unis de subventionner une industrie nationale d&#39;énergie propre. La majeure partie de l&#39;activité de piles d&#39;A123 a été vendue en 2013 à Wanxiang Group, une entreprise de pièces à ce moment-là, il avait lancé une campagne nationale visant à créer un secteur des batteries mondialement dominant.

Vieau pensait qu’il en avait assez des affaires liées aux batteries. Puis il a changé d&#39;avis. Aujourd&#39;hui, il dirige à nouveau un démarrage de batterie qui lutte contre un monde surpeuplé. Cette fois, cependant, il n’essaie pas de perfectionner la technologie lithium-ion. Il essaie de le battre.

Vieau est administrateur et ancien PDG de Vionx Energy, une startup basée à Woburn, dans la banlieue de Boston. Les investisseurs, principalement des sociétés de capital-risque, ont jusqu&#39;à présent versé environ 130 millions de dollars à Vionx et à une société remplacée. Vionx – "nom stupide, mais ils le sont toujours", me dit Vieau à propos du surnom, qui se prononce "Vy-on-ix" – cherche à développer un type de batterie totalement différent, capable de stocker de manière rentable de grandes quantités d&#39;énergie renouvelable. énergie pendant de nombreuses heures. Vionx fait partie de la ruée vers les entreprises qui développent des technologies de stockage sur réseau qui ressemblent moins à des batteries, mais aussi à des fonctions et à des tailles telles que des centrales électriques.

Plutôt que de modifier les matériaux de l&#39;ère spatiale à l&#39;échelle nanométrique, comme le font les prétendants au lithium-ion, les candidats au stockage sur réseau travaillent avec des plaques de métal, des pompes et des tuyaux industriels et des brasseries de produits chimiques déversant des milliers de gallons à la fois dans des réservoirs gigantesques.

L’engin spécifique de Vionx est appelé une «batterie à flux». S&#39;il fonctionne à l’échelle, il peut fournir jusqu’à environ 10 heures de stockage économique – peut-être plus, avec des réservoirs plus grands. Au fil des ans, les batteries à circulation sont devenues une blague dans le monde de l’énergie. Une myriade d’efforts visant à les utiliser à plus grande échelle a échoué, à la fois parce que la technologie était en panne et que le réseau alimenté par des combustibles fossiles n’avait pas besoin de beaucoup de stockage.

Le pari de Vieau est aujourd’hui que deux changements fondamentaux – une technologie améliorée et une chute des prix de l’énergie renouvelable – signifient que le passé n’est pas un prologue. Les prix de l&#39;énergie solaire ont chuté de 70% au cours de la dernière décennie. Cela, ajouté à l’énergie éolienne nouvellement bon marché, stimule la demande de stockage d’énergie. Dans le même temps, selon Wood Mackenzie, le prix des systèmes de stockage en réseau (les batteries et le reste du kit nécessaire à leur installation) a chuté de 85% depuis 2010. (Voir l&#39;encadré à gauche.)

<p class = "toile-atome toile-texte Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Les grands acteurs de la puissance investissent désormais dans le stockage en grille technologies, dont l’un est Exelon, qui a réalisé un chiffre d’affaires de 35,9 milliards de dollars en 2018, est le numéro 93 du Fortune 500 de cette année et compte environ 10 millions de clients. Il expérimente avec de grosses batteries et écrit des chèques à Volta, la firme d&#39;investissement dans les technologies de la batterie. Chris Gould, vice-président directeur chargé de la stratégie d&#39;entreprise chez Exelon, a déclaré que la société avait conclu que le passage à l&#39;énergie solaire s&#39;intensifierait et qu&#39;Exelon pourrait en tirer profit. "Data-reactid =" 204 "> De sérieux acteurs du secteur de l&#39;énergie investissent désormais dans le réseau. Parmi celles-ci, Exelon, qui a réalisé un chiffre d’affaires de 35,9 milliards de dollars en 2018, est n ° 93 sur le Fortune 500 de cette année et compte environ 10 millions de clients. Chris Gould, vice-président directeur de la stratégie d’entreprise d’Exelon, a déclaré que la société avait conclu que le passage à l’énergie solaire entraînerait une intensification du stockage et que Exelon pourrait en tirer profit.

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Vérification de la réalité: Jusqu&#39;à présent, le stockage ne fournit qu&#39;une infime quantité d&#39;énergie au réseau. In 2018, according to Wood Mac­kenzie, 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." data-reactid="205">Reality check: So far, storage provides only a tiny amount of power to the grid. In 2018, according to Wood Mac­kenzie, 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.

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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.

<p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)–sm Mt(0.8em)–sm" type="text" content="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.”" data-reactid="231">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.”

<p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)–sm Mt(0.8em)–sm" type="text" content="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." data-reactid="232">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. Buyin g 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?”

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "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." data-reactid="234">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.

<p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)–sm Mt(0.8em)–sm" type="text" content="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.”" data-reactid="252">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.”

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "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." data-reactid="253">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.”

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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.

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "A version of this article appears in the June 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “The Race To Build A Better Battery.”" data-reactid="286">A version of this article appears in the June 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “The Race To Build A Better Battery.”

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