Meet the Battery Startup Taking on China’s Giants

遇见挑战中国电池巨头的初创公司

The field of lithium batteries is currently dominated by Chinese companies like BYD and CATL. Not only do they sell the majority of batteries that go into electric vehicles and energy storage projects worldwide, they’re also opening up new factories in your backyard. When companies outside China try to compete, like Europe’s Northvolt, they quickly realize how hard it is.

目前，锂电池领域由比亚迪（BYD）和宁德时代（CATL）等中国公司主导。它们不仅销售了全球大部分用于电动汽车和储能项目的电池，还在世界各地开设了新工厂。当中国以外的公司（如欧洲的 Northvolt）试图竞争时，他们很快就会意识到这有多么困难。

But there’s still hope for China’s rivals. If another company can crack the next generation of battery technology, it may still be able to take the lead. And the battery industry already has a consensus on what that technology might be: solid-state batteries.

但中国竞争对手仍有一线希望。如果另一家公司能够攻克下一代电池技术，它或许仍有机会占据领先地位。电池行业对于这项技术是什么已经达成了共识：固态电池。

Today, almost all batteries have liquid electrolytes that carry ions between the positive and negative sides. But the liquid can spill, vaporize, and even catch fire. So for decades, scientists have tried to replace it with a solid electrolyte that could make batteries safer, more powerful, and more resilient to cold temperatures.

如今，几乎所有的电池都使用液体电解质在正负极之间传输离子。但液体可能会泄漏、蒸发，甚至起火。因此，几十年来，科学家们一直试图用固体电解质来替代它，从而使电池更安全、更强大，并能更好地适应低温环境。

Solid-state batteries have been created in labs, but they are expensive and difficult to manufacture at scale. Many companies are trying to find the right chemical composition that will make this technology commercially viable. That’s also the goal of Vincent Yang, founder and CEO of ProLogium, a Taiwanese company that claims it will start mass-producing solid-state batteries as soon as 2027.

固态电池已经在实验室中被制造出来，但它们成本高昂且难以大规模生产。许多公司正在努力寻找合适的化学成分，以使这项技术具有商业可行性。这也是辉能科技（ProLogium）创始人兼首席执行官杨思枏（Vincent Yang）的目标。这家台湾公司声称，最早将于 2027 年开始大规模生产固态电池。

I recently met Yang in New York City. (Despite having the same last name, there’s no relation.) With a doctor’s degree in material science and over 20 years of experience researching and making batteries, he’s seen it all. “I’ve made almost every kind of battery. You can call me a living fossil for some of the older technologies,” he says.

我最近在纽约市见到了杨先生。（尽管我们同姓，但并无亲戚关系。）他拥有材料科学博士学位，在电池研发和制造方面拥有超过 20 年的经验，可谓阅历丰富。“我几乎制造过各种类型的电池。对于一些旧技术，你可以称我为‘活化石’，”他说。

Until recently, ProLogium was one of the smaller players in the battery space. Then, at the start of this year, the company introduced its fourth-generation solid-state battery product that it claims will be cheap and easy to mass-produce. Now, ProLogium is expanding rapidly: In February, it broke ground on a gigafactory in Dunkirk, France, after receiving a €1.5 billion local government grant to produce solid-state batteries in Europe. In May, ProLogium announced a merger with TDAC, an American blank check company, to go public on the Nasdaq at a $3.8 billion valuation.

直到最近，辉能科技在电池领域还只是一个小玩家。今年年初，该公司推出了其第四代固态电池产品，并声称该产品成本低廉且易于大规模生产。现在，辉能科技正在迅速扩张：今年 2 月，在获得法国当地政府 15 亿欧元的补贴后，其位于法国敦刻尔克的超级工厂破土动工，旨在欧洲生产固态电池。5 月，辉能科技宣布与美国特殊目的收购公司（SPAC）TDAC 合并，以 38 亿美元的估值在纳斯达克上市。

For researchers of solid-state batteries, the current moment feels ripe with opportunity. Sure, Chinese companies like CATL are also investing in solid-state battery research, and they have the benefit of having more resources and more clients. But the fact that solid-state batteries use very different materials and production methods means there’s a new playing field where upstarts have a chance to beat the establishment players. “We are racing with the greatest people in the world. But even for the largest companies in the world, this remains a technical challenge that’s difficult to solve,” Yang says. The competition provides pressure, but also an adrenaline rush.

对于固态电池研究人员来说，当下正是充满机遇的时刻。诚然，像宁德时代这样的中国公司也在投资固态电池研究，并且拥有资源更多、客户更多的优势。但固态电池使用完全不同的材料和生产方法，这意味着出现了一个新的竞争领域，初创公司有机会击败老牌巨头。“我们正在与世界上最优秀的人竞争。但即使对于全球最大的公司来说，这仍然是一个难以解决的技术挑战，”杨先生说。竞争带来了压力，但也带来了肾上腺素飙升的快感。

ProLogium’s edge is that it doesn’t have a factory in China. In today’s geopolitics, dependence on Chinese technology is increasingly frowned upon. Yang says his company recently signed a deal with a state-backed utility infrastructure company in Asia, which specifically requested a battery supplier not from mainland China. “Almost every region [in the world] has its own protectionism. It has positive and negative outcomes, but I have to admit we can sometimes benefit from it,” he says.

辉能科技的优势在于它在中国没有工厂。在当今的地缘政治环境下，对中国技术的依赖越来越受到排斥。杨先生表示，他的公司最近与亚洲一家国有公用事业基础设施公司签署了一项协议，对方明确要求电池供应商不能来自中国大陆。“世界上几乎每个地区都有自己的保护主义。它有积极的一面，也有消极的一面，但我必须承认，我们有时能从中受益，”他说。

When Protectionism Becomes an Opportunity

当保护主义成为机遇

There are a lot of companies vying for solid-state battery dominance. In 2024, China formed the All-Solid-State Battery Collaborative Innovation Platform (CASIP), bringing together virtually every big-name battery manufacturer in the country. The move was a coordinated national push to consolidate resources and accelerate development. Asian conglomerates, like Toyota from Japan and Samsung from South Korea, are also leaders in the field. And then there are prominent American startups like QuantumScape and Solid Power.

许多公司都在争夺固态电池的主导地位。2024 年，中国成立了中国全固态电池协同创新平台（CASIP），几乎汇集了国内所有知名电池制造商。此举是一项协调一致的国家行动，旨在整合资源并加速发展。日本的丰田（Toyota）和韩国的三星（Samsung）等亚洲企业集团也是该领域的领导者。此外，还有 QuantumScape 和 Solid Power 等著名的美国初创公司。

“Solid-state batteries have less mature supply chains than conventional lithium-ion, which cuts both ways,” says Jiayan Shi, a battery researcher at BloombergNEF, “There is more opportunity for non-Chinese players to establish supply chains, but also more vulnerability to disruption of Chinese-controlled upstream materials, like graphite, rare earths, lithium.”

彭博新能源财经（BloombergNEF）的电池研究员石家彦（Jiayan Shi）表示：“与传统的锂离子电池相比，固态电池的供应链不够成熟，这有利有弊。非中国企业有更多机会建立自己的供应链，但也更容易受到中国控制的上游材料（如石墨、稀土、锂）供应中断的影响。”

Seeing the important role that batteries will play in energy resilience and combating climate change, many countries have started introducing national-security-driven policies that push for locally produced batteries. The European Union’s Net-Zero Industry Act, which went into effect last year, aims to produce 40 percent of Europe’s battery demand locally by 2030.

鉴于电池在能源韧性和应对气候变化方面将发挥重要作用，许多国家已开始出台以国家安全为导向的政策，推动电池的本土化生产。去年生效的欧盟《净零工业法案》（Net-Zero Industry Act）旨在到 2030 年实现欧洲 40% 的电池需求由本土生产。

It is in this climate that ProLogium received a generous incentive to open its first overseas gigafactory in France. Its latest-generation product could start mass production in France by late 2028, Yang says. After that, the company is open to manufacturing anywhere in the world and is already exploring opportunities in the US, according to its SEC filing in July.

正是在这种环境下，辉能科技获得了慷慨的激励措施，得以在法国开设其首家海外超级工厂。杨先生表示，其最新一代产品可能在 2028 年底前在法国开始大规模生产。根据其 7 月份提交给美国证券交易委员会（SEC）的文件，此后，该公司对在全球任何地方进行制造持开放态度，并已在探索美国的市场机会。

More Than Just Cars

不仅仅是汽车

It makes sense that ProLogium’s first factory outside of Taiwan would be in France, because Europe is currently one of the largest markets for electric vehicles. EVs, in turn, are one of the largest use cases for solid-state batteries. Yang tells me that ProLogium has been working on putting its products in cars for a long time: It partnered with Chinese automakers Weltmeister and Enovate to introduce solid-state-battery-powered prototype cars back in 2018. But Yang says ProLogium’s involvement in these projects was not reported because Daimler (now Mercedes-Benz), one of the company’s major investors, preferred to keep the collaborations quiet.

辉能科技在台湾以外的第一家工厂选址法国是有道理的，因为欧洲目前是最大的电动汽车市场之一。反过来，电动汽车也是固态电池最大的应用场景之一。杨先生告诉我，辉能科技长期以来一直致力于将其产品应用于汽车：早在 2018 年，它就与中国汽车制造商威马汽车（Weltmeister）和电咖汽车（Enovate）合作，推出了搭载固态电池的原型车。但杨先生表示，辉能科技参与这些项目的情况并未被报道，因为该公司主要投资者之一戴姆勒（现为梅赛德斯-奔驰）倾向于保持这些合作的低调。

There’s one problem with using solid-state batteries in cars: Since… 在汽车中使用固态电池存在一个问题：由于……