Steve LeVine
About
Steve writes on the future of batteries and the technologies they enable—electric vehicles, robotaxis, humanoid robots, drones, flying cars and AI data centers among them—and their epochal impacts. He formerly founded and wrote The Mobilist at Medium, and before that founded and ran the Future newsletter at Axios. He taught energy security to graduate students at Georgetown University for nine years.
Previously, Steve was a foreign correspondent in the former Soviet Union, Pakistan and the Philippines. In the 'Stans, he ran a bureau for The Wall Street Journal, and before that for The New York Times, the Financial Times and Newsweek.
Steve has written three books. The latest is The Powerhouse: America, China and the Great Battery War, which was long-listed for the 2015 Financial Times-McKinsey Book of the Year prize. In 2007, Random House published The Oil and the Glory, which chronicled the struggle for fortune and power on the Caspian Sea. It was a BusinessWeek magazine Top 10 book for the year. In 2008, Random House published Putin's Labyrinth, a profile of Russia through the life and death of a half-dozen Russians.
Articles
Forum Posts
Manchin-Schumer and electric cars
Posted bySteve LeVine
Sens. Schumer and Manchin have smartly gone both ways on China: The deal takes a page from China's winning EV-battery strategy—extending $7,500 in EV purchase credits, but requiring that much of the battery be built in North America. And it's anti-China—the metals inside the battery would have to be from a U.S. free trade partner, which China isn't.The Information
Ford has made a big strategic battery and raw materials play
Posted bySteve LeVine
Ford this morning became the first Western automaker to concretely make a shift away from supply-challenged nickel-based batteries, and to plentiful iron. It was a triple-play announcement: building U.S. LFP capacity; buying full LFP cell-to-pack packs from CATL for the Mustang Mach-E; and doing a possible nickel deal in Indonesia. Look for copycat announcements very soon.The Information
Celina Mikolajczak's next job
Posted bySteve LeVine
A few weeks after her exit from QuantumScape, Celina Mikolajczak moves to lithium-sulfur developer Lyten as chief battery technology officer. Lithium sulfur is super early in development—well behind lithium metal for example. It will be awhile before it's scaled up.The Information
Why China looks likely to keep dominating batteries
Posted bySteve LeVine
While the West wrings its hands over China's dominance in electric vehicles and batteries, its companies keep building their advantage. The latest is Gangfeng, the Chinese lithium giant, which yesterday announced a billion-dollar deal to buy Argentina's Lithea, a lithium brine producer. Apart from Tesla, is any Western company demonstrating this kind of commercial ne...The Information