 Elon Musk Mocks Nikola’s Hydrogen Cars, Explains Why Fuel Cells Won’t Work 伊隆.马斯克嘲笑Nikola氢能汽车，并解释为什么燃料电池技术行不通 Tesla CEO Elon Musk thinks hydrogen fuel cells are an extremely inefficient way of generating energy. ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images 特斯拉的老板马斯克认为氢能燃料电池用来发电是极没效率的。 It has been a wild week for electric carmakers, especially Tesla and its emerging EV challenger, Nikola. 对电动汽车生产商特斯拉和它的竞争对手Nikola来说，过去的一周，都是极为不平静的。 On Wednesday, Tesla shares passed the $1,000 mark for the first time after CEO Elon Musk ordered the company to prioritize manufacturing the Tesla Semi, an electric heavy-duty truck bearing the promise of launching Tesla into the lucrative commercial vehicle market. The much smaller Nikola, which touts a similar product powered by hydrogen fuel cells instead of lithium-ion batteries like Tesla, sparked even greater investor excitement: shares jumped more than 100 percent on Monday, making the newly IPO-ed company already more valuable than Ford, despite having sold zero cars. 周三，特斯拉股票首次超过1000美元/股，特斯拉老板马斯克下令公司生产特斯拉半卡。这是特斯拉的一款电动重卡，有希望将特斯拉带入利润丰厚的商用车市场。规模比特斯拉小很多的Nikola推出了一款类似的氢能燃料电池汽车（重卡），Nikola不像特斯拉那样用锂电池。Nikola公司的上市更刺激了投资人：股票飙升超过100%，刚上市市值已超过传统汽车生产商福特，尽管Nikola还没卖出过任何一辆车。  Yet, Musk doesn’t seem to think that Tesla’s stock rally has anything to do with Nikola—or the other way around. In fact, he refuses to take Nikola’s hydrogen trucks seriously. 然而，马斯克并不认为特斯拉股价的反弹和Nikola有关-或是相反。事实上，他拒绝认真对待Nikola公司的氢能燃料电池汽车。 “Fuel cells=fool sells,” the Tesla CEO mocked Nikola’s core technology in a tweet early Thursday morning. It’s “staggeringly dumb,” he wrote in another tweet. 马斯克周四早上在推特上写道：“燃料电池=傻瓜（才会买）销售”，嘲笑了Nikola公司的核心技术，他之前的另外一条推特则写道：“燃料电池它蠢的惊人”。 It’s not the first time Musk has made fun of hydrogen fuel cells. In the past, he has called them “fool cells,” “mind-boggling stupid” and “simply not possible” to succeed. “I got the fuel cell question about 8,000 times,” he tweeted Thursday. 这并不是马斯克第一次开氢能燃料电池的玩笑了。以前，他曾称燃料电池为“傻瓜电池”，“蠢的让人难以置信”，和“非常简单，但难以成功”，“有人问我有关燃料的问题得有8000次了”，他周四在推特上说道。 The debate between lithium-ion batteries versus hydrogen fuel cells has been going on in the circle of alternative energy for years. Both technologies aim for a zero-emission future, but breakthroughs in fuel cell technology came much later than that lithium-ion batteries and no company has successfully commercialized its use in cars yet. 有关锂电池和燃料电池的争论，在能源替代领域已持续多年。这2项技术的目标都是未来无排放，但燃料电池的技术突破比锂电池晚的多，目前还没有一家企业能成功的将燃料电池成功的商用化应用到汽车上。 A fuel cell generates energy in the form of electricity by harnessing chemical reactions from hydrogen and oxygen while leaving water (H2O) as the only byproduct. It’s supposed to be the perfect clean energy and more efficient than lithium-ion batteries because hydrogen is lightweight. Not to mention that it is the most abundant resource in the universe. 燃料电池利用氢气和氧气发生化学反应产生电能，唯一的副产品是水。氢气被认为是最完美的清洁能源，而且能比锂离子更高效。而且氢是宇宙中含量最丰富的资源。 The problem, though, is that it takes a lot of energy in the first place to turn hydrogen into useable car fuel. The most common method is electrolyzing water. 但问题是，将氢气转化为汽车可用的燃料首选需要消耗大量的能源。而最常用的办法就是电解水制氢。 “It’s just very difficult to make hydrogen, store it, and use it in a car. Hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism. It’s not a source” Musk said in a 2015 interview. 马斯克在2015年的一次采访中曾说：“制氢储氢用在汽车上这个过程太困难了。氢能是一种能源存储机制，但并不是来源”。 “Electrolysis is an extremely inefficient energy process,” he went on to explain. “If you charge your battery packs from a solar panel directly, compared with trying to split water, take the hydrogen, dump the oxygen, compress the hydrogen with extremely high pressure or liquify it, put it in a car, and run a fuel cell. It is about half the efficiency. It’s terrible.” 马斯克继续解释说：“电解是一个效率极低的过程“，”如果你能从太阳能电池板直接给电池组充电，而不是试图电解水，获得氢气，放出氧气，然后再高压压缩氢或是液化氢，再放汽车上使用，和燃料电池发生化学反应。这个过程的能效只有一半左右。非常糟糕“。 Nikola CEO Trevor Milton has reacted to such doubt in the past by arguing that it takes time for a nascent technology like fuel cells to mature. “I think most technologies take 10 years or more to productionize,” he told Observer in an interview last year. “While electric is now more mainstream, there are still issues to be worked out. It is the same with fuel cells. They are already on the road and being improved on.” Nikola公司的CEO, Trevor Milton曾对这种质疑作出回应，他认为燃料电池等新兴技术的成熟需要时间。他在去年接受采访时表示：“我认为，大多数技术需要10年或是更长的时间才能进行投产“，”虽然电动汽车现在是主流，但仍有一些问题需要解决，燃料电池也是如此。燃料电池汽车已经上路行驶了，还在不断改进中“。 Observer has reached out to Milton for a response to Musk’s latest tweets but hasn’t heard back at press time. Observer就马斯克的最新推文联系了Milton，但截至发稿时仍未到得回复。 |
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