Panasonic looks beyond Tesla and signs a partnership with Toyota in the electric car battery sector in 2020

According to a report by Nikkei Asian Review, Toyota Motor Corporation and Panasonic are combining their resources as part of a joint venture to produce electric vehicle batteries. To compete with fast-growing Chinese players in the electric vehicle market, five new Panasonic battery manufacturing facilities in Japan and China will be part of the new partnership to increase production to 50 times the current capacity. Pooling resources could provide both companies with the network resources they need to increase their presence in the EV market.

The two Japanese manufacturing giants already have experience of collaboration. Primearth EV Energy is their company producing batteries for Toyota and Honda hybrid vehicles. The new collaboration will initially focus on increasing production and tripling annual sales of Toyota electric vehicles to 5.5 million by 2030, but will also focus on developing next-generation high-capacity, high-capacity lithium batteries. , a goal requiring a lot of capital the best talents. The company's electric vehicle partner, Mazda Motor, and the Daihatsu Motor and Subaru subsidiaries could be the first recipients of the newly produced batteries, Honda Motor provided by Panasonic on the wish list of adoption of the product.

A partnership agreement between Panasonic and Toyota was reached for the first time in 2017. An official announcement could be made later this week, according to a Nikkei source.

In 2017, about 60% of lithium-ion batteries in the world are manufactured in China, and the country's government is taking aggressive measures to develop this number. Tesla's treatment on the red carpet with its Gigafactory 3 is proof of this, with limited field offers in their favor and even the "green card" residence offered to CEO Elon Musk. Toyota has not kept pace with its competitors in China and Volkswagen in the electric vehicle segment, so a partnership to expand the network of resources and reach customers seems to be part of a competitive strategy. The automaker would own 51% of the new business with Panasonic.

In addition to a growing presence in China, compounding the problems with electric vehicles in the country, Tesla has partnerships with both companies in the manufacturing of batteries and electric vehicles. In 2010, Toyota bought $ 50 million worth of Tesla shares under a vehicle – to – vehicle agreement that also included the development of a version of the RAV4 model of the Japanese automaker 's. a Tesla electric powertrain. The corporate culture first sunk in this part of the deal in 2014, and then the relationships broke down and ended in 2017 due to the eventual emergence of Tesla as a full competitor of Toyota in the green car market, while cars.

Panasonic, on the other hand, continues to sign a battery production agreement with Tesla and may even intend to double that partnership by transferring its operations to a US-based site this year. Part of US production – Model 3 2170 cells – is already made in Panasonic by Gigafactory 1, but the S and X model cells are still manufactured in the company's Japanese plants. According to the Nikkei report, the new joint venture between Japanese manufacturers will not include any of Panasonic's Tesla cell manufacturing plants.