Panasonic wants to process Tesla batteries in my country

According to news, Panasonic President Tsuga Kazuhiro revealed the future battery processing plan at the CES exhibition, saying that it may process batteries for Tesla in my country. According to him, since Tesla has planned to start localized processing of its products in Shanghai, Panasonic is also considering advancing investment in my country’s factories. Although it has not yet finalized a specific plan for processing Tesla batteries in my country, Panasonic is already Consider the possibility of the plan. In this regard, some people in the industry said that up to now, the cooperation between the two parties has been mutually beneficial. As my country is currently the largest market for electric vehicles, it is a good choice for Panasonic and Tesla to build factories in my country not only to quickly occupy the market, but also to replicate the previous successful cooperation model to new factories. According to publicly available data, Panasonic’s investment in China shows that Panasonic is currently the world’s largest supplier of electric vehicle batteries. In the first half of 2017, Panasonic held a 29% share of the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle battery market. Since 2008, Panasonic has been Tesla's exclusive lithium-ion battery technology supplier. According to data, in 2013 and 2014, Panasonic supplied nearly 200 million lithium-ion batteries for Tesla. At the same time, Panasonic is also an important partner of Tesla's Super Battery Factory. In January 2016, Panasonic and Tesla jointly invested US$5 billion to build a super battery factory in Nevada, becoming the world's largest car battery factory, which has already been processed recently. According to Kazuhiro Tsuga’s statement a few days ago, Panasonic is currently considering processing batteries for Tesla’s future plant in my country, with an output equivalent to that of its plant in Nevada. Tsuga Kazuhiro said that although the specific plan for processing batteries in my country has not yet been finalized, Panasonic is already considering the possibility of processing Tesla batteries in my country. However, as early as May last year, there was news that Panasonic would invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build a power lithium battery plant in Jiangsu, my country. The factory is located in Suzhou, Jiangsu, and the batteries processed are the same as the 18650 ternary lithium-ion batteries used by Tesla. Panasonic will establish a joint venture with Chinese partners. Localized processing can be expected. In fact, in the past year, there have been many rumors that Tesla will build a factory in my country to process cars. As early as October last year, it was reported that Tesla had signed an agreement to build a factory in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. After the completion of the factory, Tesla still has to pay 25% of the import tax, but will own the company. The complete controlling interest of the company, and the lower processing and transportation costs are likely to offset the expenses caused by tariffs. At that time, Tesla told reporters, “In order to better serve the Chinese market, Tesla is discussing with the Shanghai government the possibility of building factories in this area.” In this regard, the auto industry analyst Zhong Shi is accepting The reporter said in an interview that building a factory in China is of great significance for Tesla. Although it is reported that Tesla still has to pay 25% tariffs, the overall cost is that Tesla's processing of cars in my country will greatly reduce the cost of logistics and spare parts, and attract Chinese consumers at lower prices. Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the Travel Federation, said that for Tesla, my country's market potential has not been fully tapped. In particular, if its Model 3 is localized, it will be recognized by more and more consumers due to its cost advantages, and it will become an important opportunity for its second take-off. It is worth noting that, according to the sales data recently released by Tesla, although the production of its Model 3 models rose sharply in the fourth quarter of last year, there is still a big gap between the previous set goals. At the same time, Tesla announced a few days ago that it has once again postponed its plan to produce 5,000 Model 3 vehicles per week. According to its latest forecast, the company is expected to process approximately 2500 Model 3 vehicles per week before the end of the first quarter of this year. This data has been halved compared with previous commitments. In this regard, Tsuga Kazuhiro said that due to the impact of Tesla's adjustment of production targets, Panasonic has also postponed the original delivery date of on-board batteries. He said that although this will have an initial impact on performance, the financial report as of March 2018 will cover the lowered performance and will not have a larger impact in the end.