Science AMA Series: I'm Steve LeVine, Washington correspondant for Quartz Magazine, I wrote THE POWERHOUSE: America, China, and the Great Battery War (Penguin), a real-time thriller about the worldwide race to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. AMA!

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Hi Reddit,

I'm a writer at Quartz. My beat is the intersection of geopolitics, energy, science and technology. Today, oil prices are around $33 a barrel, and most analysts think the highest they'll go this year is another $10--up to $43, which is much lower than it was when I started looking seriously at advanced batteries. That was around six years ago.

Batteries caught my eye because I kept seeing the presidents and prime ministers of countries assert that they--their nation--was going to dominate what they predicted were big battery or electric car industries. That was the US (Obama), China (Hu), Japan and about a dozen more, and the numbers they tossed around for how much these industries would be worth were enormous. They were the size of Google's annual revenue at the time. The kind of wealth that could move geopolitics.

I persuaded one of the federal US labs--Argonne, near Chicago--to let me sit with its battery team for a year while they worked on creating the big breakthrough that would bring on this age. Argonne's credential is that its battery material--NMC--is in the Chevy Volt.

It stretched to two years. By the end--and through today--Argonne did not create the big breakthrough (nor did anyone else). The electrics and hybrids that have been introduced have not gone viral. And, as we started with, oil prices are about 75% lower than they were when it was thought that economy--saving gasoline--would be a big impetus for the electric car age.

So was the battery and electric car talk back then a bunch of hype? In some cases, definitely, and we can get into that. I've done some work on a couple of the hypesters. But my own theory--and it's based on what I'm watching--is that we are entering a natural, second stage of the mainstreaming of electric cars.

Batteries are one thing--the researchers I talk to don't have a lot of confidence that they are close to a big leap. Nor do they see anything on the horizon that creates the big electrochemical advance. They are still at the bench, working away.

But--and we can get into this--the manufacturers are going ahead anyway. The pure electric Chevy Bolt, introduced a couple of weeks ago at CES in Las Vegas, was an example of this. It will go 200 miles on a charge and cost $30,000 after the federal subsidy. That is mainstream distance and price. It's based on advances on the factory floor--engineering with the cars, and tinkering with the batteries.

So I see the possibility that the last half of the decade proves to be a tipping point for electrics.

A wild card is Apple. It’s stealthily building its pure electric Titan, aiming for launch in 2019 or so. If it does launch, that will mean serious resonance for mainstream electrics.

I will be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything!

">Science AMA Series: I'm Steve LeVine, Washington correspondant for Quartz Magazine, I wrote THE POWERHOUSE: America, China, and the Great Battery War (Penguin), a real-time thriller about the worldwide race to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. AMA!