Welcome back to The Electric!

Save the date: Electric vehicle sales are ticking up around the world, but in one country they rose threefold last year—India, where a mania has erupted over electric two-wheelers. The leading company in the nascent industry is Hero Electric, India’s largest manufacturer of electric two-wheelers. So I’m excited to host Naveen Munjal, Hero’s managing director, for the next Live Chat With The Electric, May 3 at noon ET. Registration and more details to come. Email me if you’d like to save your place: steve@theinformation.com.

It seems like we’ve been waiting forever for Western companies to announce plans to make iron-based cathodes and break China’s solid grip on the technology. Last week, some candidates finally surfaced. We take a look at them. Spoiler alert: Don’t expect China to leave the game just yet.

For a year and a half, it’s been clear that a new iron age is opening in electric vehicle batteries. Tesla has said it will use an iron-based battery for up to two-thirds of its EVs, and Volkswagen and other automakers have said they will abandon long-favored nickel-based batteries for at least some of their vehicles, too. But we heard nothing more about the switch to iron—specifically about where the Western automakers planned to obtain these new batteries, the supply of which China currently dominates.

Now, though, companies claiming they will manufacture iron-based batteries have begun to emerge in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere in the West. It is emblematic of the new electric era’s boomtown atmosphere that many of these companies have a frontier, Wild West air. None has ever actually made an iron-based cathode—not recently, anyway.

They include the following: