the great battery race

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC

THE GREAT BATTERY RACEAuthor(s): Steve LeVineSource: Foreign Policy, No. 182 (November 2010), pp. 88-95Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29764925 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 00:43

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Foreign Policy.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.60 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 00:43:54 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=wpni

http://www.jstor.org/stable/29764925?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


THE

A 19TH-CENTURY TECHNOLOGY COULD DETERMINE WHICH NATION TRIUMPHS IN THE 21ST.

STEVE LeVINE REPORTS FROM THE GLOBAL COMPETITION TO REPLACE THE COMBUSTION ENGINE.



- 40. Ow v

4. P

14 ,

jF to

All Ile 0

lit

LIP

S.A."

46

WE, 70

- It



= THE GREAT BATTERY RACE |

In 2007, the Chinese government approached Wan Gang, a

54-year-old engineer-turned-university-president from Shanghai,

with a remarkable offer. Chinese President Hu Jintao had taken up the political mantra of "scientific development," and the authori?

ties wanted someone of Wan's caliber to serve as the country's min?

ister of science and technology?so badly, in fact, that they were

willing to violate longstanding convention and elevate Wan even though he wasn't a Communist Party member. It was the first time in more than

five decades that such an exception had been made for a government minister.

What made Wan of such interest to Hu was his expertise in a once

obscure corner of automotive engineering: After 10 years working for the Audi car company in Germany, he was a world authority on electric-vehicle

technology. Just as important, Wan possessed the technical know-how

necessary to supervise groundbreaking research in advanced batteries,

the make-or-break component that could separate an electric vehicle

that consumers would actually want to buy from an expensive exercise

in engineering vanity. Shortly after returning to China, he was named the chief scientist on the country's blue-ribbon research panel for elec?

tric cars.

The Chinese government saw in the technology that Wan had mas?

tered a potential future pillar of its economy. Starting virtually from

scratch, Beijing announced last year it would become the world's largest producer of the vehicles within the next few years. "China is commit? ted to developing clean and electric vehicles," Wan told me when I met him in Chicago this summer. "Batteries and clean vehicles are a national

strategic priority."

Indeed, the battery, among the most humble and unsexy of inven?

tions, might just be the most important technological battleground of the next two decades. The discovery of the next key breakthroughs in the field could mean not just a fortune for a handful of companies, but

Asia's growth has been mostly driven by manu?

facturing exports, while the United States' was

fueled first by Silicon Valley's tech boom and lat? er by elaborate (and ultimately ruinous) financial instruments. But those platforms have reached or

are nearing their limits, and in the scramble to

avoid another recession, the world's great econo?

mies are looking for the next big thing, an engine of economic growth for the future.

These two aspirations?for a less oil-dependent

world and for a more prosperous one?are rap?

idly converging in a global race for a better bat?

tery. By 2030, experts say, advanced batteries will swell into a $100 billion-a-year business.

They will also enable an electric-car industry on

the order of half a trillion dollars, on a par with the global pharmaceutical industry and capable of spawning companies on the scale of Exxon?

Mobil, General Electric, and Toyota. "It is a

matter of national wealth and national economic

advantage in a way that few new things in society can be," Peter Harrop, who heads the Britain

based technology consulting firm IDTechEx, told me. "But it is a high-stakes game. It is going to be beneficial [only] to certain companies in certain countries."

Two of the likeliest beneficiaries are Japan and South Korea, the top producers of today's cutting-edge batteries and the favorites to de?

velop tomorrow's. But the more interesting?and

potentially world-changing?rivalry is between

TWO ASPIRATONS-FOfi A LESS OH.-DEPBDBH WORLD AND FOR A MORE PROSPEROUS ONE ARE RAPIDLY CON VERGING IN A GLOBAL COMPETITION FOR A BETTER BATTERY. the remaking of whole economies?and the rebalancing of geopolitical power that typically accompanies such shifts. A Chinese triumph could

speed the country's global advance; an American one could give U.S. dominance a new lease on life.

Two developments have brought us to this pass. Developed countries and rising powers alike are looking to curb their oil-guzzling habits, for

any number of reasons: climate change, unsavory petrostate politics, the

looming fear there simply isn't enough petroleum on the planet to satisfy everyone. The result is a new global interest in alternatives to petroleum

and the internal combustion engine?most prominently advanced bat?

tery technology, the necessary precondition for the development of an

affordable, powerful electric car.

But the world doesn't just need a better car?it also needs a better means of building and sustaining economies. Over the last 20 years,

Steve LeVine is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy and an adjunct professor at Georgetown

University's Security Studies Program.

the United States and China, both of which are

scrambling to get into the game. Each country

has a great deal to win by establishing itself as an

early leader in advanced batteries, in competition or in partnership with East Asia's technological heavyweights. The contest has taken on ultra

serious geopolitical heft for the United States, at its lowest economic ebb in recent memory, and for China, eager to cement its position as a

globally influential superpower. Both countries' 2 o

governments have adopted an unapologetically | hands-on approach, attempting to drive innova-

| tion from the top down and viewing the project g

through the lens of national strength. The analo- <

gies tend more toward the Manhattan Project 8>

than Microsoft. | On a July visit to the Smith Electric Vehicles ?

90 Foreign Policy



0 0

0

s.e nto a

5100-bi on-a-year

plant in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.'

President Barack Obama vowed that within five years, the United States would be

making 40 percent of the world's advanced bat teries. (It made just 2 percent in 2009.) "That's

how we ensure that America doesn't just limp

along," he declared, "but instead that we're

prospering-that this nation leads the industries

of the future." Obama's point man for this ambi

tious project defines his goals in equally sweeping terms. "The ability of a country to manufacture

batteries and vehicles will help to create wealth, will help to provide resilience against oil-supply disruptions, and help to create jobs," David San

dalow, U.S. assistant energy secretary for policy

and international affairs, told me. "And those, in

turn, will create national power."

But while U.S. officials have been sweeping in

their rhetoric, China has been breathtaking in the scale and specificity with which it is ordering up an electric-car industry. Beijing in recent years

has issued government directives that, if realized,

will result in the production of some 30 electric vehicle models by 2012; expanding lithium-ion

battery manufacturing into a $25 billion-a-year

industry by that same year; and the construction

of about 100 charging stations this year alone across the country.

it's not just the United States and China. Google the phrase rF"electric car" and the name of any reasonably sized country,

and you will turn up yet another aspirant. More than a dozen

would-be contenders from South America to Scandinavia are talking

about the technology in positively existential terms, even those with

little plausible hope of coming up winners. German Chancellor Angela Merkel hopes that "in the 21st century we are again the nation that is

able to build the most intelligent and environmentally friendly cars." French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo has announced a govern

ment-industry plan to win "the battle of the electric car." Those who

develop and manufacture the next-generation technology for electric

cars, these leaders believe, will be the haves. And those who don't will

be at the mercy of those who do.

QNEI, TWO, THREE DOORS, AND JEFFREY CHAMBERLAIN is into

the "dry room," a state-of-the-art, moisture-proof chamber

customized for fiddling with the exacting technology of ad vanced lithium-ion batteries. Chamberlain, the 44-year-old

manager of a scientific team at the U.S. Energy Department's

Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Chicago, walks

over to a machine loaded with giant rolls of white plastic film. Peering through plastic protective glasses, he explains how the film is coated:

slowly, with a liquid mixture of aluminum and carbon. The coating

process is crucial to the lithium-ion battery. It's also very, very old. "It's

a 19th-century technology," Chamberlain says; in labs in other coun

tries, he adds in a whisper, he has seen scientists actually dip a finger

into the slurry to judge its quality. The battery, like the light bulb, is at its heart an archaic device, an

NOVEMBER 2010 91



IE hRAIT BITTERY RACE

artifact of the early Industrial Revolution tucked inside the gadgets of the 21st century. In 1749, half a century before Alessandro Volta invented the first battery, Benjamin Franklin coined the word to describe a rudimentary electric contraption he built out of glass panes, lead plates, and wires. The modern Energizer is a remarkably close descendant of the first lead-acid

battery-two sheets of the pliable metal divided by a piece of linen and

suspended in a glass jar of a sulfuric acid solution-invented by French

physicist Gaston Plant6 in 1859. The world's two largest car-battery man

ufacturers, Johnson Controls and Exide Technologies, both U.S.-based en

terprises, make most of their money selling what are essentially variations on Plante's 15 1-year-old workhorse.

The greatest advance in battery design since Plant6 originated in the United States in 1977. The world's faith in petroleum had been shaken

by the oil shocks earlier in the de

cade, and even Exxon, the world's most profitable oil company, was m

the market for alternatives. Exxon

developed and commercialized the lithium-ion battery, which generated power by dischargi

ions from one side of the device and absorbing them on the other-an innovation that allowed the battery to store far more

energy than earlier technologies. But as memories of the energy crisis faded, and with them the imperative to escape from dependence on oil, Exxon abruptly abandoned the lithium-ion business. Japan's Sony picked it up, combining advances by American and Japanese researchers and releasing a much-improved version of Exxon's lithium-ion invention in 1991; it packed four times the energy of its lead-acid predecessor. Today, Japanese companies like Panasonic, Sony, and Toyota dominate

a $9 billion-a-year lithium-ion battery industry. The future of the business is bright enough that even Exxon is trying to get back into it, belatedly reinvesting in lithium-ion R&D. The world is fast moving from nickel

metal-hydride batteries-an intermediary technology, also developed in the United States and commercialized in Japan, that is used in Toyota Priuses, among other things-to lithium-ion ones, which store twice the

power in the same space. Lithium-ion batteries power most of our laptops and cell phones. For the next decade at least, they will be the favored

technology as well for hybrid-electric and electric cars, which for the first time are being seriously contemplated as a widely used replacement for the conventional internal combustion engine.

But as they have gone from curiosity to great green hope, electric cars have run smack against the limits of today's batteries, limits that are likely to keep such vehicles too expensive and underpowered to go mainstream if no one can figure out how to get past them. As it stands, lithium-ion. batteries cost $1,000 per kilowatt-hour of energy output. Engineers say it's theoretically possible to bring that figure down to $300, but the laws of physics prevent going beyond that. Even if they hit that target, however, battery-powered cars would still have costs too high, ranges too limited, and recharge times too long to truly compete with conventional vehicles. (Lithium-ion batteries also have a rather unsettling tendency, on rare occa

sions, to burst into flames. This is unpileasant enough when it happens in a cell phone or laptop, but an entirely different matter in a cat) The Tesla

Roadster, a lithium-ion-driven electric car that debuted in 2006, has the range and speed-up to 130 miles per hour-to compete with sports cars. But it takes more than 6,000 individual batteries to pull it off, and the car currently costs north of

$100,000. Both the American and Chinese gov ernments are offering generous rebates to make their domestically manufactured electric cars more affordable, but even with the government discount, General Motors' soon-to-be-released

Chevy Volt will still cost a steep $33,500. That's why the future of the electric-car indus

try belongs not to the scientists and engineers who

perfect the batteries we have now, but the ones

who figure out what comes next, in the 2020s, the 2030s, and beyond. The holy grail is a battery

powerful and safe enough to challenge the en

ergy density of gasoline and the freedom of internal combustion engine-if such a

battery could be made, consumers would

presumably flock to cleaner, quieter elec tric cars. Which is why scientists at Ar

gonne and around the world are working feverishly to develop what comes next.

Consider the potential: Just the currently ex

pected advances in lithium-ion technology will allow hybrid-electric and electric cars to take over up to 15 percent of the world's new-car

sales by 2020, estimates research firm IHs Global

Insight; by 2030, the figure could rise to about 50 percent, according to U.S. Energy Informa tion Administration projections. The 2020 pre diction works out to about 7.5 million cars a

year at today's production rates. Let's say that economies of scale bring the cars' average cost down to $30,000 by then. That's a $225 billion

a-year business, just under the entire global sales last year of Toyota, the world's largest carmaker.

By 2030, it could be more than three times that. No one can accurately project the market for a

product that doesn't exist yet, of course. But these estimates matter because they are believed, to a

greater or lesser degree, by the leaders of most of the world's industrialized countries. And most of them seem to agree with Spanish Prime Minister

Jos6 Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's call to get in on a

competition "not to be missed." The appeal isn't hard to grasp: The possible windfalls are tantaliz

ingly large at a time when nearly everyone's econ

omy has taken a beating. And the breakthrough is far away enough, and the terms by which victors will be decided are vague enough, that everyone can envision winnnga. !

92 FOREIGN POLICY



Size of the bet: $15 billion by 2020

Strategy: Beijing has set wildly ambitious targets for its car com?

panies, demanding that they put 500,000 electric cars on the road

by the end of 2011, three to four

years ahead of their U.S. com?

petitors. The country is also luring

foreign innovators with cheap

manufacturing?in exchange for

invaluable intellectual property.

Why it could win: Because it

really, really wants to.

Why it might not: Brains. Virtually all the leading battery-development scientists in the world live

elsewhere, and China doesn't hold

any of the patents for today's most

cutting-edge technologies.

Size of the bet: S6.8 billion in sub?

sidies for electric and high-efficiency vehicles

Strategy: Japan's car companies have partnered with local electronics

giants, aiming to seize the new market

for both batteries and electric cars.

Why it could win: Because it's

winning today. Japan figured out the

future of battery-powered locomotion

before anyone else: The country's

companies launched the first version

of today's lithium-ion battery and sold

43 percent of them last year.

Why it might not: Japan has a

relatively small domestic consumer

base and relies on exports?leaving the country at the mercy of Chinese

and American trade protectionism, which has proved a stumbling block

before.

Tl ELECTRIC

CAROUSE As the four front-runners sprint around the track, some favorites could end up in the dust

Size of the bet: $12.5 billion over

the next decade

Strategy: Unlike the other big three, South Korea isn't expending much effort on building hybrid and

electric cars?its companies have

a single-minded focus on winning the battery game.

Why it could win: South Korea

has a record of needling its way into Japanese markets. In 2005, South Korean companies began to crack the Japanese hegemony over consumer electronics such

as flat-screen televisions. Industry

analysts see a similar future

unfolding in advanced batteries.

Why it might not: Japan has a

record of figuring these things out first.

Size of the bet: $27 billion in loan guarantees and grants

Strategy:The U.S. government is

pumping money into joint ventures

between domestic car companies and foreign battery manufacturers.

Its stimulus bill also poured billions

for battery work into the govern? ment's elite research laboratories.

Why it could win: Because

it has to. The United States

badly needs a new platform for

economic growth. History counts

for something, too. Every major

battery breakthrough of the last

100 years has originated in the

United States.

Why it might not: Have you vis?

ited Detroit lately? The American

manufacturing base is a thing of

the past.

On ii in aftf.rnoox of July 2i, Wan Gang and about a dozen

other Chinese engineers paid a visit to Argonne National Labo?

ratory. The secure research campus is the direct descendant of

the University of Chicago lab where Knrico Fermi conducted the first nuclear chain reaction in the early days of the Manhattan

Project; today it is home to the vanguard of the U.S. govern?

ment's advanced battery research. The Argonne scientists in charge of the

work, along with San da low, the U.S. assistant energy secretary, had gath

? ered in a conference room to meet Wan and his team. <

I "You have made remarkable achievements here," Wan told the Ar

? gonne researchers. "So today I have many questions for you."

I "That's why I am sweating," replied AI Sattel berger, a senior Argonne

I scientist. The room erupted in laughter?mostly from the Americans, who

I were acutely aware that they were the underdogs in their race with Wan

i and his team.

Although the U.S. government began promot?

ing battery development during the George W.

Bush years, its interest in the technology began in

earnest after the pre-recession spike in oil prices,

which reached an unprecedented $147 a barrel

in July 2008. 1 he following month, the newly nominated Obama declared in his Democratic

National Convention speech, "For the sake of

our economy, our security, and the future of our

planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10

years, we will finally end our dependence on oil

from the Middle Fast."

After the presidential election, Obama staffed

his Fnergy Department with people who felt

similarly. Steven Chu, Obama s Nobel laureate

\"o\ i mm k 20 in 93



= the great battery race | EE^-^^^^B^^^^BB^?1^^^Mf1

energy secretary, had led pioneering alternative-fuel ^^^^^^^^Êfl research as director of the department's Lawrence ̂^^^^^B^^Ê Berkeley National Laboratory. Sandalow is a for- V?9P5?^Îk mer executive vice president of the World Wildlife y ̂mR^g/^^^Bm Fund who had spent the previous five years at the fS^^^^^^HY Brookings Institution puzzling over a technology he ^^^^^^^^H

4 believed to be key to kicking America's petroleum j^^^^^^^H | habit: the advanced battery. In his 2008 book, Free- ^^K^^^^^^^M dorn from Oil, Sandalow sketched a plan for how <J^^^^^^^^^H the next U.S. president could promote the adoption of electric cars, beginning with subsidized vehicle ffl^^^^^^^^H purchases and battery-performance guarantees and ̂ ^^^^^^^^^P ending with investment in research to improve the ̂ ^^^^^^^^Bt technology to the point where it would be viable ̂ ^^^^^^^^^H on its own. "The biggest barrier to mass [electric ^^^^^^^^^^H car] production," he wrote in Freedom from Oil, ^^^^^^^^^^H

battery technology." The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

passed by the U.S. Congress in February 2009 gave Sandalow the oppor?

tunity to road-test his ideas. The stimulus bill handed the Energy Depart? ment $167 billion for grants and loan guarantees, six times the depart? ment's annual budget and a near-blank check for innovation; $2.4 billion of the grants have since gone to efforts to build a battery-manufacturing base, and Chu has included battery research in the portfolios of the na?

tionwide network of energy research centers he has funded. Labs backed with Energy Department money, such as Argonne, are now experiment? ing with an exotic array of nascent technologies: batteries powered by zinc-bromide solutions, magnesium, lithium-sulfur combinations, and even just the movement of electrons.

But the United States is sprinting to catch up. Technologically speak? ing, Japan is the current leader?it has a two-decade jump on the compe

This time the aim was explicit: The Chinese

government vowed to "build an innovation

oriented country," becoming a tech-exporting superpower. "Scientists and engineers are at the

spearhead of China's economic development," Mu Rongping, director of the Chinese Acade?

my of Sciences' Institute of Policy and Manage? ment, told the South China Morning Post last

year. "They are aiming for the heart of China's business rivals."

At the tip of the spear is Wan Gang, whose

ministry oversees the 863 Program and virtually every other technology-oriented effort of the Chi

1FEMF0RTffMrai?JU?;SAYS0K BEND 1TB0US OF MASS IliODUCTNr tition in research and development. South Korea, which has dominated

electronics manufacturing since 2005, is a close second. Still, it's China

that inspires the most fear in the United States. In 1986, the same year that Ronald Reagan removed Jimmy Carter's

solar panels from the White House roof, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping launched the 863 Program, an initiative with the aim of jump-starting

technological innovation in the Middle Kingdom. In the 1990s and

2000s, as China's accelerating growth brought with it dependence on

oil imports and coal-fired power plants that choked the skies, the proj? ect's attentions turned to alternative-energy technology. Funding for en?

ergy research under the 863 Program grew nearly 50 times its original size between 1991 and 2005, according to the New Yorker. Among the new initiatives was a push, launched in 1998, to develop a domestic

lithium-ion battery industry. The Chinese government began handing multimillion-dollar grants to companies looking to get into the electric car business.

In 2006, China ramped up its investment again, bankrolling 16 scientific research projects totaling about $147 million a year each.

nese government. Speaking to Britain's Guard? ian last year, Wan compared the global financial

meltdown to past crises that had provided the

impetus for great technological breakthroughs?

breakthroughs that in turn became engines for new economic development. "This time," he

said, "new energy technology will probably be

the new driving force." China may lag Japan and South Korea in bat?

tery expertise, but its size, not to mention its gov? ernment's ability to mobilize whole industries, is ? a substantial equalizer. Beijing is betting that by | sheer force of will and scale of investment it can ? overtake its more technologically sophisticated g

neighbors. Working with the public encourage- I ment of Premier Wen Jiabao, Wan has set tar- | gets that call for Chinese companies to put an <

unparalleled 500,000 electric cars on the road I

94 Foreign Policy



next year, up from a few thousand today (though Wan offered more

modest goals in his discussions with American policymakers and sci

entists). By government edict, some two dozen Chinese companies are

bringing models to the country's auto market-the largest in the world

as of 2009-in the next two years. All-electric taxis built by auto manu

facturer BYD already troll the streets of the company's home city of

Shenzhen. "China is spending more than anyone else. They are coming

on very strong technically and physically," says Ralph Brodd, a long time authority on the battery industry. "Being there recently, it was

very much like what I experienced in the '60s and '70s in the United

States-everyone is enthusiastic and working hard."

The United States isn't just competing against China-it's trying to

escape its own recent history. Over the last quarter-century, the country

has lost much of the manufacturing capital required to launch a new

industry from whole cloth. The same trends that led American com

panies to hand over previous generations of the battery industry to Ja

pan-the loss of heavy industrial capacity and diminished investments

in research and development that followed the shareholder-value mania

of the 1980s and 1990s-have left the country ill-prepared to establish

itself as a leader in the next generation. Meanwhile, rising middle-class

living standards and job opportunities in China, India, and elsewhere mean that the United States can no longer count on attracting the

world's best and brightest. Increasingly, the sharpest minds in engineer

ing and the sciences would just as soon stay home-or, like Wan Gang,

move back. "I fear for the Americans," says Harrop, the technology

consultant. "They are so far behind in terms of mass production and

also don't have the customers in their own area. The Obama money

gives Americans a chance. But it certainly doesn't guarantee success

and doesn't outspend the East."

So the United States has done what any outmatched competitor

would do: It has looked around to see who its friends are. Foremost

among them is South Korea, which currently accounts for 33 percent of

the lithium-ion battery market. Much of Energy Secretary Chu's multi

billion-dollar investment in the battery industry isn't going to Ameri can companies, but to South Korean ones with assembly plants in the

United States-enough, American policymakers hope, to build a strong

production base while they continue to try to create the batteries of

tomorrow. Of the U.S. stimulus awards to battery-makers, the second

highest sum, $160 million, went to Seoul-based LG for a factory build

ing lithium-ion batteries for the Chevy Volt in Holland, Michigan. "We

want to get these cars to market," Sandalow told me. "And if the only

supplier right now is elsewhere, that's a reality some of our businesses

will have to deal with."

when governments talk about the battery race, only one num

ber matters to the scientists who are actually running it: 1,600. T hat is the number of watt-hours per kilogram of gasoline, the energy potency that people have come to expect from their

personal transportation. Today's lithium-ion batteries produce

only one-eighth that amount; scientists believe the laws of physics will

keep them from getting much better than double that figure, a pal try 400 watt-hours per kilogram. Ultimately, the winner of the battery

age will be the country whose technology comes

somewhere close to crossing the 1,600 bar.

Winfried Wilcke, a program director at IBM's

San Jose, Calif., laboratory, has been tasked with

getting there. A physicist and brilliant polymath, Wilcke worked on heavy-ion nuclear reactions at

Los Alamos National Laboratory before moving

to IBM, where he developed the models on which

some of today's most powerful supercomputers

are based. Lately he has turned his attention to

lithium air, a technology that would replace some

of the crucial heavy and expensive minerals in to

day's batteries with, quite literally, air. In conver

sations I had with him over the past year, Wilcke

sounded optimistic that his team would succeed not soon, but perhaps in the next decade. Even if

IBM could get lithium air reasonably close to the

performance of gasoline, Wilcke told me, the auto

industry would be "dancing in the street."

But lithium air has many skeptics. Jeff Dahn, who researches lithium-ion technology at Dal

housie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, be

lieves the breakthroughs Wilcke envisions are

beyond the possibilities allowed by physics. "Lithium air is an oxymoron," he told me. "I

personally believe [it] has no place in any dis cussion of advanced battery chemistry for poli

cymakers." He enumerated the reasons: "It's a

totally unforgiving technology. You have to pre

vent moisture in the air from getting on the lithi

um. You need a flow field in the cell, and pumps.

The cost will be through the roof. Lithium ion is so easy by comparison."

The disagreement illustrates just how difficult

it is to predict the outcome of the battery race

and just how ill-suited analogies are to the geo

politically charged technological competitions of

the past-the atom bomb, the conquest of space,

the perfection of the semiconductor. Compared

with the rocket scientists who knew the physics

of launching a rocket to the moon long before

they figured out how to accomplish it, today's battery researchers are operating without a map. The breakthrough that makes the technology a

reality could come from any number of avenues

of exploration-or not at all. But the same ambiguity that makes the bat

tery race so daunting is the source of its appeal to governments and scientists alike. All believe

that someone, somewhere-whether it's in a lab

at Argonne or one in Shanghai-will make the

transformative discovery. For them, the only

thing worse than losing the battery race is not

NOVEMBER 2010 95



the great battery race

Documents