Friday 2 November 2018

Panasonic pledges to step up battery output at Tesla Gigafactory

Panasonic has committed to increasing its $1.6 billion (£1.2bn) investment in Tesla's Gigafactory 1, with the aim of increasing battery production to 35GWh of output by the end of March 2019.

Earlier this week, the technology giant reported a decline in quarterly profits due to the rising costs of its operations at the facility - it has now announced it is in talks with Tesla to deploy new production lines.

A production level of 35GWh was Tesla’s original target for battery cell production at Gigafactory 1, with later plans to reach 105GWh - the factory’s structure is currently only a third the size of its planned final form.

Battery supply from the facility is said to be the main bottleneck slowing Tesla's production of its Model 3 cars.

Panasonic CEO Kazuhiro Tsuga said: "Investment for capacity beyond 35GWh means that Tesla would also need to make substantial investment in vehicle production so we will closely align with each other.