Panasonic Holdings, which supplies electric car batteries to Tesla, is in talks to build another US battery plant worth about $4 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report today, citing Bloomberg.
Oklahoma is a possible location for the new plant, although there are no guarantees a deal will be reached, according to the report. Any new electric vehicle battery facility comes on top of the company’s already-existing plan for another $4 billion project that Panasonic said in July it plans to build in Kansas.
A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma governor declined to comment to the WSJ.
A Panasonic spokesman said the company is “looking at various growth strategies for our car battery business, but there is no further information we can share at this time beyond what we have already announced.”
The Japanese automaker is looking to increase production capacity to meet growing demand from Tesla and other electric vehicle makers as consumers begin to embrace cleaner cars in a meaningful way. The production of electric vehicle battery cells is an activity that the 104-year-old electronics giant sees as critical to its future growth.
Although Panasonic has supplied Tesla since its early days, it has been slower to scale than rivals LG Energy Solution of South Korea and Contemporary Amperex Technology of China, which is the world’s largest maker of electric vehicle batteries .
The Korean battery makers also have several plans for US battery plants, building four for General Motors, two for Stellantis and three for Ford.
Source: Capital

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