Dear Readers,

Batteries aren't “sexy” until you realize they're about to become the most consequential technology of the next decade. We are talking about the infrastructure layer that will determine whether renewable energy actually works, whether EVs become genuinely mainstream, and whether our power grids can handle the insatiable appetite of AI data centers.

In today's Deep Dive, we're unpacking the battery revolution that's quietly unfolding across multiple fronts: China just connected a gigawatt-hour vanadium flow battery to a solar farm, sodium-ion cells are creeping toward commercial viability, Toyota is betting big on solid-state for 2027, and second-life EV batteries are finding new purpose powering data centers.

The real story isn't about one breakthrough, it's about an emerging portfolio of chemistries, each optimized for different jobs, from smoothing grid fluctuations in minutes to surviving week-long renewable droughts. If you want to understand where energy, transportation, and AI intersect, this is the issue to read.

All the best,

A decade ago, batteries were mostly the invisible “stuff inside devices.” Today they’re starting to look like the operating system of the energy transition. If you want a quick read on how the 21st century will feel, how cheap electricity gets, how stable grids become, how quickly we kick fossil fuels out of daily life, watch the battery industry - because energy will be the biggest upcoming bottleneck.

This is happening for a simple reason: wind and solar are not just “clean,” they’re variable (”volatile”). Electricity demand is increasing exponentially, and many nations are turning their backs on fossil fuels for numerous reasons (I have already written about the reasons in the DeepDive "Energy comes AGI's true limit"). Solar and wind energy are being massively expanded, not only in China. And in order to access this energy when needed, batteries are required. In other words: Batteries are time machines for electrons: they take energy from the wrong hour and deliver it in the right one.

At the same time, electric vehicles have forced battery innovation onto the fast lane. The EV battery isn’t merely a component, it’s the most expensive part of the car (so far), the heaviest part of the car, and the part customers worry about most; range, safety, resale value, charging speed. That pressure has turned battery chemistry into a global industrial arms race, with China, the US, Japan, and Europe all trying to lock in supply chains and technological advantage.

So the real story isn’t “batteries are improving.” The story is: we’re watching the emergence of a battery portfolio: different chemistries for different jobs, because the world needs two distinct “miracles” at once: (1) grids that can run on renewables even through “dunkelflaute” (a lovely german word) weeks (for example for data centers), and (2) EVs that feel effortless for normal people, not just enthusiasts. The question is whether the breakthroughs arriving right now - sodium-ion, solid-state, iron-air, flow batteries, silicon anodes, next-gen LFP variants - add up to something bigger than incremental progress: a genuine step-change in how we store energy and move through the world.