2021年经济学人 电动汽车升级（1）（在线收听）

Science & technology

科技板块

Electric cars

电动汽车

Pump up the voltage!

加大电压

Electric vehicles which operate at 800v can be recharged in half the time

800v电动汽车充电时可以节省一半的时间

Electric vehicles (EVS) are becoming commoner.

电动汽车(EVS)变得越来越普遍。

Some 750,000 of them were sold in the first quarter of 2021 according to JATO Dynamics, a British consultancy.

据英国咨询公司JATO Dynamics透露，2021年第一季度(1~3月)电动汽车的销量在75万台左右。

JATO reckons EVS now account for just over 4% of new-car sales, up from 2% in the same quarter last year.

据JATO估计，目前电动汽车在新车销售中所占比例略高于4%，高于去年同期的2%。

Yet many potential buyers still suffer from "range anxiety", a wariness about having to interrupt a long journey while an EV's battery is recharged.

然而，许多潜在买家仍有“里程焦虑”，即电动汽车在跑长途时需要中断行程进行充电。

The good news is that the time required to do this is about to be slashed.

好消息是，充电所需时间将大大缩短。

Most EVS operate at 400 volts (400v).

大多数电动汽车在400伏(400v)电压下工作。

But a number of producers and their component suppliers are now gearing up to introduce 800v drive systems.

但许多生产商及其零部件供应商现在正准备引进800v驱动系统。

Higher voltages supply the same amount of power with less current, which means electric cables can be made lighter—the consequent weight saving helping to increase a vehicle's range,

GKN汽车公司的技术总监克里斯托夫·吉伦表示，更高的电压以更小的电流提供相同的功率，这意味着电缆可以做得更轻，由此产生的重量减轻有助于增加车辆的行驶里程。

says Christoph Gillen, a technology director for GKN Automotive, a British components group which recently announced that it is accelerating its development of 800v drive systems.

该公司最近宣布正在加速其800v驱动系统的开发。

As most cabling is made from copper, the price of which has been soaring, this should also save carmakers money.

由于大多数电缆都是由铜制成的，而铜价一直在飙升，这也为汽车制造商节省了资金。

What drivers are most likely to notice, though, according to Dr Gillen, is that vehicles with 800v drive systems will be able to make greater use of some of the latest fast chargers.

不过，吉伦博士表示，最可能引起司机们注意的是，装有800v驱动系统的汽车能够更好地使用一些最新的快速充电器。

For instance, Ionity, a German company backed by a number of carmakers, is building a network of 350kw fast chargers across Europe.

例如，由多家汽车制造商支持的德国公司Ionity正在全欧洲建设一个350千瓦的快速充电网络，

These automatically optimise charging speed to the maximum that a vehicle can handle.

能够自动优化充电速度至该车可承载的最大充电速度。

Using one of these, an EV with an 800v system will be able to recharge about twice as quickly as a similar vehicle with a 400v system.

若使用其中一种，配备800v系统的电动汽车的充电速度会是配备400v系统的同类汽车的两倍。

Fast chargers are also more efficient.

快速充电器也变得更有效率。

All chargers take electricity from the grid, which uses an alternating current (AC).

所有的充电器都从电网中获取电能，而电网使用的是交流电。

When an EV is plugged into a standard charging point, its systems convert AC into direct current (DC), which is what a battery needs to store electricity.

当电动汽车插入标准充电点时，其系统将交流电转换为电池存储电力所需要的直流电(DC)。

Fast chargers bypass the vehicle's converter, using their own beefier bits of kit to pump a DC charge directly into the battery.

快速充电器绕过车辆的转换器，使用自己的强大套件直接将直流电注入电池。