Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/everything-starts-junk-says-michael-100001881.html Japan's Panasonic Corp on Wednesday reported a decline in quarterly profit far beyond what analysts estimated, as costs rose at the battery plant it jointly runs with U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc. Business with Tesla has yet to contribute to profit. Yet Panasonic said it was in talks to add to its $1.6 billion investment and take capacity at the so-called Gigafactory over the 35 Gigawatt hours (GWh) it is set to reach by March-end. Panasonic is the exclusive battery cell supplier for Tesla cars. As production of the automaker's mass-market Model 3 accelerated in the July-September quarter, Panasonic had to send more engineers and spend more to increase cell production. This is interesting. Source2: https://electrek.co/2018/09/26/panasonic-ahead-schedule-tesla-gigafactory-1-battery-cell-production-lines/ The Japanese electronics giant is the sole battery cell supplier for Tesla’s vehicles. It manufactures custom 18650 li-ion cells in Japan for Tesla’s Model S and Model X vehicles. The Model 3 cells are custom 2170 li-ion cells co-developed with Tesla and manufactured by Panasonic at Gigafactory 1. Earlier this year, Panasonic admitted that Model 3’s production ramp is creating ‘occasional battery cell shortages’ and they said that they are open to increasing their investment in the factory. . . . As we previously reported, the original plan for the full capacity was 35 GWh of battery cells and 50 GWh of battery packs. The company later claimed to have found ways to improve efficiency and increase production capacity to 105 GWh of battery cells and 150 GWh of battery packs within the same structure. The current Gigafactory 1 structure has a 1.9 million square-foot footprint. Including several levels, the factory currently has about 4.9 million square feet of operational space. This represents only ~30 percent of the planned completed Gigafactory, according to Tesla. Source3: https://www.electrive.com/2018/09/27/panasonic-ahead-of-schedule-for-gigafactory-expansion/ The plan by Tesla’s battery partner Panasonic to set up three new assembly lines in the Gigafactory 1 in Nevada by the end of the year, will likely be completed ahead of schedule. The expansion will increase the production capacity by about 30%. The news was announced by Yoshio Ito, head of the automobile division at Panasonic. He declined to mention an explicit date, however. The expansion for the Gigafactory, which was announced this summer, will see the factory have a total of thirteen production lines. In this production dimension, it would be possible for Panasonic to deliver a total capacity of 35 GWh to Tesla, which is the requirement for the company to keep up with their current Model 3 production. . . . Tesla had initially planned to increase their 30% increase for the construction of stationary batteries, however the high demand for the Model 3 has taken over all of their capacities at the Gigafactory 1. “The bottleneck for Model 3 production has been our batteries,” Ito said. “They just want us to make as many as possible.” Interesting as I knew the 'Tesla Killers' were facing battery problems. To see that Tesla is also battery constrained. Bob Wilson
