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砖家 兄：钒电池这块不是非常了解。在目前涉猎的资料方面鲜有这方面的，应该不是主流方向。在太阳能风能储能市场，目前较多被采用实验的有传统铅酸、技术改良后的铅酸（前文有引用的资料）和更多的锂电池，包括A123和HEV的产品等。
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BARRONs于近日有专门文章谈及HEV这间公司，有一些内容值得参考：
SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 2009
FEATURE
Powering Up…or Down?
By LESLIE P. NORTON
The push for greener cars could be a boon for Ener1, a publicly traded pre-pay electric-vehicle battery outfit. But there's a catch.
BARACK OBAMA HAS A VISION: a million electric vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015. If that dream becomes a reality, it could be good news for Ener1 , a small New York City-based manufacturer of electric-car batteries. Ener1, which has manufacturing facilities in Indiana and Korea, is a publicly traded pure-play maker of electric-vehicle batteries in the U.S., and even boasts a killer Nasdaq ticker symbol: HEV, short for hybrid electric vehicle.
Russian Boris Zingarevich is a major investor in Ener1, which plans to sell batteries to compete with the Korean ones used in plug-in vehicles such as the coming Chevrolet Volt.
The Obama administration is pushing hard for green transportation. Last month, at a joint session of Congress, the president called for "a retooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win," and lamented that hybrids now run on batteries made in Korea. That cry is echoed by Denise Gray, the battery czarina at General Motors (GM), whose electric-powered Chevrolet Volt is scheduled to debut next year and which uses Korean batteries because Chevy couldn't find a domestic source for what was needed. Says Gray: "The closer [the supplier] is, the less the cost. We should have the capability here."
If Ener1 were to win 5% to 12% of a million-vehicle battery market, the company estimates, it could pull in $2.1 billion in annual revenue with 15% margins (based on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). "If you want to apply a 15 times multiple to that cash flow, which in any normal market is a reasonable growth market, you're talking about a $4.5 billion equity-market cap," says CEO Charles Gassenheimer.（CEO的黄粱美梦能实现吗？）
That's far from HEV's $480 million stock-market value late last week, when its shares were trading at $4.20. (Five years ago, the stock peaked above 10.) A $2.1 billion revenue stream looks fabulous, too, compared with the $7 million in revenue Ener1 had last year, along with a loss of $43 million, or 42 cents a share. In part, that showing reflected lower-than-expected revenue at Enertech, a Korean manufacturer it acquired in October. The Enertech purchase was another step on a journey that has taken Ener1 from a telecom-gear maker 24 years ago to a developer of advanced batteries, products in which it gained additional expertise through a joint venture with Delphi, GM's former parts unit. Ener1 bought out Delphi's stake last August.
The key to Ener1's ambitions is a $480 million Department of Energy loan, which it's seeking to expand its Indiana facilities under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Incentive Program. And very soon, it hopes to apply for part of a $2 billion DOE grant from the Advanced Battery Manufacturing Initiative, part of the Obama stimulus package.
The Bottom Line
The uncertainty over Ener1's future has knocked the stock down well over 50% from its high. If the company wins a federal loan, it could be viable. If not, it faces tough going.Steve Milunovich, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst, likes the "multiple chemistries" that Ener1 uses in its products, including its promising lithium-ion battery, which lasts longer and can store and produce more energy than other types of power cells. Ener1's flat batteries also stack well and, the company says, dissipate heat efficiently -- a major problem with lithium-ion batteries. (Remember the laptop computer fires caused by Sony batteries?)
Gassenheimer says the U.S. auto industry's viability depends on developing a high-tech battery industry. "The last thing we want is to trade dependence on foreign oil for dependence on foreign batteries," he declares.
But for all its promise, Ener1 has just one major publicly disclosed customer: Think Global, a Norwegian electric-car maker that temporarily halted production last year. Another issue: Ener1's ownership.
As of late February, some 62% of Ener1's outstanding shares were owned by privately held Ener1 Group. In turn, 66% of Ener1 Group -- a recent participant in a $5.7 million loan to Think Global, which is trying to emerge from bankruptcy -- is held by Bzinfin, a British Virgin Islands company whose "indirect beneficial owner" is Boris Zingarevich, a Russian businessman. Zingarevich has close ties to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
"Dispositive and voting power" over the Ener1 shares held by Ener1 Group is exercised by a board that includes CEO Gassenheimer, Boris Zingarevich, Mikhail Zingarevich (Boris' brother) and Alexei Paramonov.
The Zingareviches have vast interests in timber. In the early 1990s, they and Zakhar Smushkin began building what is now Ilim Holdings, based in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2004, Forbes listed the brothers among the richest Russians. In the '90s, Ilim's legal director was Dmitry Medvedev. In 1999, Medvedev joined Putin's cabinet; last year, he become president. Ilim has prospered. In 2007, it sold a 50% stake to International Paper (IP) for $620 million. Boris, Mikhail and Smushkin are on Ilim's board.
In theory, foreign control shouldn't matter to the Department of Energy. However, it wants to foster an American advanced-battery industry. The U.S. players now include A123 Systems, founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Johnson Controls (JCI), which has a joint venture with France's Saft Groupe (SAFT.France). Says Frank Gaffney, president of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy: "We desperately need to be establishing an industrial base in this country for a battery technology... . [But] it's insanity to be building a national battery infrastructure in the pockets of the oligarchs of the past and future Soviet Union." Kevin Kearns, president of the Washington-based U.S. Business & Industry Council, worries that Ener1's DOE-funded expertise could "be sucked out of the company and sent back to Russia." One factor behind such concerns: Advanced batteries are likely to have military, as well as civilian, uses.
Attempts to reach Zingarevich through Ilim Group and through Bzinfin's attorney in Geneva were unsuccessful. However, in a statement, Ener1 blames the emergence of this issue on the efforts of a short seller to drive down its share price. It also notes that Boris Zingarevich has "indirect ownership of less than 40%" of its shares.
In any case, Ener1 has survived the first round of the DoE's loan process, which whittled the number of applicants to 25 from 75, and now must pass the DoE's due-diligence vetting. Applicants must show that their products are technically feasible and their businesses are financially viable. The DOE requires that applicants have manufacturing facilities in the U.S., that engineering integration be done here, and that related costs be paid to American suppliers. The $480 million loan, it's hoped, will come through this year.
Gassenheimer says that Zingarevich joined the company "when the two founders ran into financial difficulties... If it were not for Boris, this company would not be alive today. He's been a tremendous partner, a patient investor. It's nice to have someone with this level of patience that is fully committed to the story." He adds that Zingarevich "as a matter of SEC rules...is deemed to 'beneficially own' a majority of our shares" but has no day-to-day role in the company. And Gassenheimer says that, like many U.S. companies, its investors include Americans and foreigners.
The Ener1 CEO is clearly upset about the low stock price; he blames hedge funds having to sell HEV shares to meet redemptions. Ener1's prospects have never been brighter, he contends, and it has financing alternatives if the loan is denied. For example, it could seek a strategic partnership, like that of Toyota with Panasonic or Johnson Controls with Saft. Gassenheimer says he's been in talks about such deals since Ener1 bought out Delphi.
Today, he adds, Ener1 has more than 90 customers (although he won't name them) and 15 programs for automotive or defense applications. Among potential customers: a large European auto maker now testing a battery pack for a hybrid; another big customer testing an electric-vehicle pack; and a national postal service considering converting vehicles to electric power.
As for his stock, Gassenheimer says it's for long-term investors: "Those who buy at these prices will be very well-rewarded."
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又见技术突破的新闻。
Battery Technology Breakthough:
Physicist Develops New Type of Battery with Incredible Energy DensityWritten by: Aaron Turpen
Published on March 15th, 2009 in Electric Cars
Physicists at the University of Miami and Tokyo have together invented a new type of battery, featured in the journal Nature. The batteries are “spun” fibers about the thickness of a hair and utilize nanotechnology elements to give them incredible energy density.
Using nanomagnets inside magnetic tunnel junctions, external magnetic forces can cause huge amounts of energy to be stored inside these tunnels. Think of it as a wind-up toy being cranked to coil the spring, as the external magnet energizes the battery cell. It’s almost exactly that, but on a much tighter scale–it’s solid-state, not chemistry.
When a load is placed on the system, this magnetic energy is re-released as electricity. “We had anticipated the effect,” says lead inventor Stuart Barnes, “but the device produced a voltage over 100 times too big and for tens of minutes, rather than for milliseconds as we had expected.”
This means an enormous amount of energy density is possible with batteries made of groups of these tubes. Barnes believes that, once perfected, a battery the diameter of a human hair could provide the energy to move an electric car for miles.
The new technology has implications for more than just batteries. It could make cell phones smaller, electric motors smaller, and even reduce the number of magnets needed to close your refrigerator door. It’s definitely remarkable stuff, though seeing it in market applications is obviously years down the road.
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