Panasonic expects Tesla demand to double sales of auto batteries

Cleantechnica

Tesla’s partner for the lithium-ion battery Gigafactory in Nevada, Panasonic Corporation of Japan, has publicly revealed that it expects its annual sales of auto-related lithium-ion batteries to more than double within 3 years owing to expected strong and growing demand for Tesla’s products, according to recent reports.

The executive officer in charge of Panasonic’s automotive and industrial systems business, Kenji Tamura, broke the news — more specifically, he stated that he expected Panasonic’s annual automotive battery sales to increase to 400 billion yen (~$3.98 billion) for the business year that ends in March 2019.

Panasonic’s automotive battery sales total for the business year that ended in March 2016 was 180 billion yen.

When energy storage products are factored in this rises, Reuters notes that the “company sees combined annual sales of automobile batteries and energy storage products to grow to 500 billion yen, around 2.5 times sales in the last fiscal year.”

Continuing: “Tamura also said Panasonic planned to bring forward its $1.6 billion investment in Tesla’s $5 billion ‘Gigafactory’ plant in the US state of Nevada upon the request of the electric car maker, to meet strong orders for Tesla’s upcoming Model 3 sedan. Panasonic is the exclusive supplier of batteries for the Model 3, Tesla’s first mass-market car.”

As a reminder here, according to the company’s CEO Elon Musk, Tesla is aiming to rapidly ramp up production to the point of being able to produce 500,000 electric cars a year by the end of 2018.

The statements from Panasonic are to be expected, since everything seems to be on track for Tesla in regards to production capacity and demand, but good to see the statements from Panasonic nonetheless.
Source: Cleantechnica. Reproduced with permission.