Welcome back to The Electric!

On Thursday: The auto and battery industries have been struck by a stark shortage of lithium and nickel, so how will they make enough lithium-ion batteries to meet anticipated demand for their electric vehicles? One option is a different kind of battery—such as a surprising one containing Prussian blue electrodes and powered by sodium ion. To discuss these new batteries, I'm excited to host Colin Wessells, CEO of Stanford spinoff Natron Energy, for the next Live Chat With The Electric. We begin at noon ET on Thursday, July 21. RSVP here. Email me directly if you’d like to invite a guest: steve@theinformation.com

China’s dominance of the battery supply chain has ignited unease elsewhere in the world. The worry is that it will become a battery OPEC. In response, nascent battery supply hubs have surfaced in Canada, northern Europe and Australia. But none of those places has quite the aspirations of Indonesia, which is building the most ambitious non-Chinese battery and EV manufacturing hub of all. This week, we look underneath Indonesia’s battery enterprise.

For centuries, Indonesia’s rare natural wealth—from spices and tea to oil and metals—has ended up in the hands of foreign companies that have shipped it abroad, taking most of the profit with them. Even after independence from the Netherlands in 1949, the country continued to export thousands of tons of tin, copper, nickel and other metals every year, mostly as raw ore.

But two years ago, President Joko Widodo slapped a ban on the export of a particularly valuable metal—nickel, a primary component in electric vehicle batteries. Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer, would allow foreign access to reserves of the metal, he said, but only if it was smelted in Indonesia and turned into valuable products that would build the country’s economy. Improbably, Jokowi—the name Widodo is known by—wanted foreign companies to turn Indonesia into a nucleus for the manufacture and export of batteries and EVs. But, after much haggling, prominent foreign players acquiesced to Jokowi’s demand. The world’s two largest makers of lithium-ion batteries—South Korea’s LG Energy Solution and China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd.—in April agreed to spend $9 billion and $6 billion, respectively, to build supply chains, from mine to smelter to battery factory, in the country. Hyundai Motor Co. has begun to make its electric Ioniq 5 at a $1.5 billion plant in Cikarang, 30 miles east of Jakarta.