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国汽车生产商比亚迪刚刚公布了明年将在洛杉矶推出其大肆造势的电动轿车的计划，这让硅谷人士不禁纷纷议论中国新的绿色技术何以比美国的还要强大。然而，在开发环境友好型技术方面，中国企业是否真的具有优势？更仔细地审视一下比亚迪便会发现，至少对比亚迪来说并非如此。该公司夸耀汽车和电池的适时产品组合──具体地说，也就是对新能源汽车来说最优质的锂电池──并且说公司去年股价涨了6倍。然而，比亚迪的电池却是用15年前的老方法生产的，它获得成功的传统轿车在其所在汽车类别中是最便宜的，而它的新能源汽车也面临着障碍。
相关报导
在生产手机电池时，质量参差不齐只是小问题，因为一部手机只要一块电池，你只要把不合格的电池销毁就行了。但是，对于电动汽车电池组来说，却是个很大的问题，因为电动汽车电池组由数百个电池组成，每个都有一盒香烟大小，所有的电池必须分毫不差的充电和放电。一个汽车电池组的最佳表现是由其中表现最差的电池决定的。比亚迪的劳动密集型生产过程是否能实现电动汽车电池所需的整齐划一的质量，这还是个未知数。
比亚迪还未推出一款混合动力汽车或电动汽车，而且一再错过上市截止时间。目前为止，比亚迪销售的汽车还都是传统的汽油引擎汽车，比亚迪的汽车在中国很受欢迎也并不是因为技术含量高，而是因为非常便宜。比亚迪宣称，一年前推出了大肆宣扬的混合动力汽车F3DM。不过，在任何经销商店里还都看不到这款车，导致行业观察人士猜测汽车的电池还没有准备好"登台亮相"。全电动e6本该今年在美国上市，后来又推迟到了2011年。不过，e6还没有通过中国的安全检测，更不用说有过之而无不及的美国检验了。对样车进行的预先评测得出的评语很尖刻：据《Car and Driver》报告，我们在车库前的车道上开的速度都要比这个快。
不管怎样，投资一直源源地涌入：比亚迪一年前吸引了全世界的关注，当时由巴菲特(Warren Buffett)控股的企业中美能源(MidAmerican Energy Holdings)斥资2.30亿美元买进了比亚迪10%的股权。之后，比亚迪的股价飙升了7倍，把公司董事长王传福推上了中国富豪榜的榜首，帐面资产达50亿美元。在此期间，比亚迪承诺将在美国推出自己的首部全电动轿车。
中美能源买进比亚迪股权的时候，媒体匆匆得出结论：巴菲特是在押宝电动汽车业。巴菲特和中美能源的高管都巧妙地没有试图消除外界的这种印象。不过各种迹象显示，他们的兴趣在别处。中美能源运营着电网，它利用可再生资源发电的量比任何主要美国公共事业公司的都大。中美能源在俄勒冈州的子公司PacifiCorp最近建起了一座足有10个40英尺集装箱大小的建筑，用来储存比亚迪的电池。该公司测试这些电池是否能够储存风能。比亚迪对巴菲特投资组合的实际贡献或许只是低成本、相对技术含量较低、用来储存风能和太阳能的电池，以便在无风天和阴天使用。
别误解，比亚迪是家运营良好的公司，董事长王传福有理由被视为是一位杰出的企业家。不过，和大部分中国企业一样，比亚迪的真正竞争优势在于它把技术产品商品化的能力，进而使之成为更多消费者可以买到的便宜产品的能力。这个功能很有用，在确保新能源产品能迅速从传统碳基技术手中赢得市场份额方面，这将至关重要。不过，并没有什么证据表明中国企业在新能源创新竞赛中跑在了前面。
（编者注：本文作者Matthew Forney现任企业研究公司Fathom China总裁，Arthur Kroeber是经济顾问公司GaveKal Dragonomics驻北京董事总经理。）
Matthew Forney / Arthur Kroeber
Chinese car-maker BYD just announced plans to launch its much-vaunted electric sedan next year in Los Angeles -- setting Silicon Valley buzzing about how China's new green technologies are gaining an edge over the U.S. But do Chinese companies really have an edge when it comes to developing eco-friendly technologies?
A closer look at BYD suggests that at least in this case, no. The company boasts a timely product mix of cars and batteries -- specifically, lithium-ion batteries, the battery of choice for new-energy cars -- and its share price has increased six-fold in the last year. But its batteries are produced using 15-year-old methods, its successful traditional sedans are the cheapest in every class in which they compete, and its new-energy cars face troubling hurdles.
Like most Chinese manufacturing companies, BYD excels in low-margin, high-volume businesses. BYD has so far achieved success in the battery business by using simpler technology than its peers. To undercut its Japanese competitors, which deploy expensive robotic arms to make uniform battery cells, BYD reverted to manual assembly lines with inexpensive labor. The result was cheaply produced batteries of inconsistent quality. Although the company can rightly be proud that it has never faced a battery recall, it scraps 15-30% of its batteries because they fail to meet quality standards -- far above the industry average of under 5%, according to German consultancy Roland Berger.
Inconsistent quality is a small problem when making mobile-phone batteries of one cell each: You simply scrap the batteries that don't make the grade. But it's an enormous problem for electric-car batteries, in which hundreds of cells, each the size of a pack of cigarettes, must charge and discharge with exact precision. A car battery works only as well as its worst cell. It is far from clear that BYD's labor-intensive process can achieve the uniformity of quality required for electric car batteries.
BYD has yet to bring a single hybrid or electric car to market and has repeatedly missed launch deadlines. Every BYD car sold to consumers so far has a traditional gasoline engine, and its models are popular in China not because they are high-tech but because they are ultra-cheap. The company claims its plug-in hybrid, the much-vaunted F3DM, went on sale a year ago. But this model has yet to appear in any dealership, leading industry observers to speculate its battery is not ready for prime time. The all-electric e6 was supposed to reach the U.S. this year, a launch date subsequently pushed out to 2011. But the e6 still hasn't passed Chinese safety tests, let alone more stringent U.S. tests. Advance reviews of prototypes have been scathing: Car and Driver reported, 'We drive faster in our driveways.'
Investment has been pouring in nonetheless: BYD grabbed the world's attention a year ago when MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a company controlled by Warren Buffett, bought a 10% stake for $230 million. After that, BYD's stock price climbed seven-fold and made chairman Wang Chuanfu China's richest man with a paper fortune of $5 billion. Along the way, BYD promised to sell America its first purely electric sedan.
When MidAmerican bought its BYD stake, the media jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Buffett was placing a bet on electric cars. Cannily, Mr. Buffett and MidAmerican executives made no effort to dispel this impression. But all evidence suggests their interests lay elsewhere. MidAmerican Energy Holdings runs power grids that generate more energy from renewable sources than any major American utility. MidAmerican's subsidiary in Oregon, PacifiCorp, recently erected a building the size of ten 40-foot storage containers that houses BYD batteries. Those batteries are being tested for the storage of wind-generated energy. BYD's real contribution to Mr. Buffett's portfolio will probably be low-cost, relatively low-tech batteries that store wind and solar power for use on days that are breezeless and cloudy.
Make no mistake, BYD is a well-run company, and its chairman Mr. Wang is rightly regarded as a brilliant entrepreneur. But the true competitive advantage of BYD, as with most Chinese firms, is its ability to commoditize technology products, thereby making them cheaply available to a wider range of customers. This is a useful function, and it will be critical in ensuring that new-energy products can rapidly increase market share against traditional carbon-based technologies. But there is little evidence that Chinese companies are ahead in this new-energy innovation race.
---
Mr. Forney is president of Fathom China, a corporate research firm. Mr. Kroeber is the Beijing-based managing director of economic consultancy GaveKal Dragonomics.
Chinese car-maker BYD just announced plans to launch its much-vaunted electric sedan next year in Los Angeles -- setting Silicon Valley buzzing about how China's new green technologies are gaining an edge over the U.S. But do Chinese companies really have an edge when it comes to developing eco-friendly technologies?
A closer look at BYD suggests that at least in this case, no. The company boasts a timely product mix of cars and batteries -- specifically, lithium-ion batteries, the battery of choice for new-energy cars -- and its share price has increased six-fold in the last year. But its batteries are produced using 15-year-old methods, its successful traditional sedans are the cheapest in every class in which they compete, and its new-energy cars face troubling hurdles.
Like most Chinese manufacturing companies, BYD excels in low-margin, high-volume businesses. BYD has so far achieved success in the battery business by using simpler technology than its peers. To undercut its Japanese competitors, which deploy expensive robotic arms to make uniform battery cells, BYD reverted to manual assembly lines with inexpensive labor. The result was cheaply produced batteries of inconsistent quality. Although the company can rightly be proud that it has never faced a battery recall, it scraps 15-30% of its batteries because they fail to meet quality standards -- far above the industry average of under 5%, according to German consultancy Roland Berger.
Inconsistent quality is a small problem when making mobile-phone batteries of one cell each: You simply scrap the batteries that don't make the grade. But it's an enormous problem for electric-car batteries, in which hundreds of cells, each the size of a pack of cigarettes, must charge and discharge with exact precision. A car battery works only as well as its worst cell. It is far from clear that BYD's labor-intensive process can achieve the uniformity of quality required for electric car batteries.
BYD has yet to bring a single hybrid or electric car to market and has repeatedly missed launch deadlines. Every BYD car sold to consumers so far has a traditional gasoline engine, and its models are popular in China not because they are high-tech but because they are ultra-cheap. The company claims its plug-in hybrid, the much-vaunted F3DM, went on sale a year ago. But this model has yet to appear in any dealership, leading industry observers to speculate its battery is not ready for prime time. The all-electric e6 was supposed to reach the U.S. this year, a launch date subsequently pushed out to 2011. But the e6 still hasn't passed Chinese safety tests, let alone more stringent U.S. tests. Advance reviews of prototypes have been scathing: Car and Driver reported, 'We drive faster in our driveways.'
Investment has been pouring in nonetheless: BYD grabbed the world's attention a year ago when MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a company controlled by Warren Buffett, bought a 10% stake for $230 million. After that, BYD's stock price climbed seven-fold and made chairman Wang Chuanfu China's richest man with a paper fortune of $5 billion. Along the way, BYD promised to sell America its first purely electric sedan.
When MidAmerican bought its BYD stake, the media jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Buffett was placing a bet on electric cars. Cannily, Mr. Buffett and MidAmerican executives made no effort to dispel this impression. But all evidence suggests their interests lay elsewhere. MidAmerican Energy Holdings runs power grids that generate more energy from renewable sources than any major American utility. MidAmerican's subsidiary in Oregon, PacifiCorp, recently erected a building the size of ten 40-foot storage containers that houses BYD batteries. Those batteries are being tested for the storage of wind-generated energy. BYD's real contribution to Mr. Buffett's portfolio will probably be low-cost, relatively low-tech batteries that store wind and solar power for use on days that are breezeless and cloudy.
Make no mistake, BYD is a well-run company, and its chairman Mr. Wang is rightly regarded as a brilliant entrepreneur. But the true competitive advantage of BYD, as with most Chinese firms, is its ability to commoditize technology products, thereby making them cheaply available to a wider range of customers. This is a useful function, and it will be critical in ensuring that new-energy products can rapidly increase market share against traditional carbon-based technologies. But there is little evidence that Chinese companies are ahead in this new-energy innovation race.
---
Mr. Forney is president of Fathom China, a corporate research firm. Mr. Kroeber is the Beijing-based managing director of economic consultancy GaveKal Dragonomics.
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