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OSAKA — Panasonic is technologically almost ready to start commercializing the cheaper, higher-capacity battery cells Tesla unveiled last year, the head of the Japanese industrial giant’s newly consolidated battery division told Nikkei.
October saw Panasonic bring all of its battery-related operations under a new in-house energy company with Kazuo Tadanobu as its CEO. In a recent interview, Tadanobu discussed its partnership with Tesla and the possibility of working with other electric-vehicle companies, as well as plans for the energy company.
Edited excerpts from the interview follow.
Q: Where are you on producing 4680 battery cells, which Tesla previewed at its Battery Day event in 2020?
A: In terms of product development, the technological goals have largely been achieved. The new batteries have roughly five times the capacity of the 2170s currently in use. But mass-producing them requires new techniques. We are currently building a prototype production line in Japan that will come online in stages. We will conduct trials toward mass production and hone the process in Japan until it can be deployed quickly.
We are working on the new battery at Tesla’s request, and we assume we will be doing business with the company. We have been in discussions with Tesla since before the 2020 event. The 4680 was decided to be the optimal size of battery after looking at costs, the balance of the vehicles themselves, and other possibilities posed by cylindrical batteries.
Q: Will you supply the batteries to companies other than Tesla — such as Apple, which is said to be considering developing its own EV?
A: As a principle, Tesla, our close partner, is our main priority. But we won’t rule out the possibility of branching out to other companies that share our values if we can do so without overextending our resources. We are considering various possibilities in terms of how we work with automakers.
Q: What is the goal of the integration of your battery operations?
A: With batteries, it’s tough to improve efficiency and precision quickly without getting everyone from materials development to commercialization and production on the same page. Development has to be handled with a [shared] platform, not by individual departments.
We’ve consolidated the technical and marketing teams that had been scattered across the parent and different departments, boosting our flexibility.
Q: What will you focus on?
A: We’ll center our efforts on eco-cars and telecommunications infrastructure.
Our cylindrical batteries [for such customers as Tesla] make it easy to balance safety and high capacity. We also want to contribute to electrifying such vehicles as trucks, which have difficulty running long distances on [cheaper] iron phosphate batteries. We’re not considering making iron phosphate batteries at this time.
For industrial applications, we want to leverage our know-how from building energy storage systems for data centers in other areas such as homes and medicine. Nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion batteries have been seeing more use in medical equipment.
We’ll expand production capacity at our battery plant in Mexico by about 20% to meet growing demand for energy storage systems.
Q: Companies are racing to ramp up investments in EV batteries.
A: I question whether the quantity of investment really matters. We need to make a certain level of investment, of course, but we will avoid making hasty moves that scatter our resources. We will work on developing new batteries and technologies ahead [of our rivals] and use them in fields where we can add value.
It’s important to think about forming bigger consortia, including on materials. But we may have been hesitant to make such moves in the past. We want to demonstrate more leadership in Japan moving forward, so we can bring together the different layers involved in this field in order to produce value quickly.
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