Panasonic has confirmed that it will begin to set up production at Gigafactory Nevada for Tesla’s 4680 battery cell later this year. The company expects to see a climb in revenue thanks to its partnership with the EV giant.
Tesla unveiled its new tabless in-house battery cell during its highly anticipated Battery Day event this past September. The automaker also announced its plans to produce it, but reassured they will continue to secure as much battery supply from other manufacturers as possible.
Elon Musk reiterated that Tesla still intends on buying as many battery cell as it can from suppliers saying: “The reason Tesla is doing its own cell production is in order to accelerate the growth. It is not to make less use of our cell suppliers. In fact, I want to be really clear Tesla wants to increase purchases from cell suppliers. And we’ve been very clear with our cell suppliers, whether it be CATL or Panasonic or LG, that we will take as many batteries as they can produce, so — and we urge them to increase their production and we will buy as much as they can send to us.”
Last year, a report from Asia-based business newspaper Nikkei Asia, confirmed that Panasonic would be joining Tesla in producing the newly introduced 4680 battery cells by setting up new production lines at existing Tesla facilities. Now, we are learning the new production line is expected to be up and running at Gigafactory Nevada later this year (via Reuters):
“The Japanese electronics conglomerate is also planning to add a new production line at the Nevada factory it owns with Tesla, and is looking at building a lithium-ion battery business in Norway in a bid to tap European carmakers. Panasonic plans to start test production for the new line – for Tesla’s 4680 battery – in the financial year beginning April 1, Umeda said.”
Panasonic’s CFO, Hirokazu Umeda also said he excepts the partnership to be extremely beneficial for the company. He expects to see profitable margins in the coming fiscal year as a result of the it, regardless of the new investment to deploy the new 4680 battery cell production.
Aside from the new 4680 production capacity from Panasonic at Gigafactory Nevada, Gigafactory Berlin and Gigafactory Texas are also slated to get their own 4680 battery cell production lines.