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Panasonic Completing 3 New Cell Production Lines At Tesla's Gigafactory (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In a Tuesday interview with Bloomberg, the head of Panasonic's Automotive Division said that the company was on track to complete an additional three battery-cell production lines at Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory before the end of this year. That puts the expansion ahead of schedule for completion. Panasonic is a joint owner of the Gigafactory. The company provides the "2170" battery cells that go into a Model 3 battery pack. Tesla packages those cells to complete the pack. In the interview, Panasonic automotive executive Yoshio Ito told Bloomberg that "the bottleneck for Model 3 production has been our batteries." Ito added, "they just want us to make as many as possible."
In short, more battery cells rolling off more lines at the Gigafactory are good for Model 3 production only if the manufacturing process gets smoother. There's evidence that this is happening, as the company was able to sell more than 28,000 Model 3s in the second quarter of 2018, albeit at the slight expense of Model S and Model X production. The three new Panasonic lines will bring the number of cell-producing lines up to 13, Bloomberg wrote. Ito told the news service that Tesla is currently using all of its Gigafactory capacity to produce vehicle batteries, despite initially planning to reserve 30 percent of its capacity to build stationary storage batteries like Powerwalls and Powerpacks. That has played out in long-delayed Powerwall installations.
In short, more battery cells rolling off more lines at the Gigafactory are good for Model 3 production only if the manufacturing process gets smoother. There's evidence that this is happening, as the company was able to sell more than 28,000 Model 3s in the second quarter of 2018, albeit at the slight expense of Model S and Model X production. The three new Panasonic lines will bring the number of cell-producing lines up to 13, Bloomberg wrote. Ito told the news service that Tesla is currently using all of its Gigafactory capacity to produce vehicle batteries, despite initially planning to reserve 30 percent of its capacity to build stationary storage batteries like Powerwalls and Powerpacks. That has played out in long-delayed Powerwall installations.
Used to be mainly for electric vehicles. Battery packs for solar powered homes and battery packs for vehicle are very similar. Panasonic pumping up the number of production lines, well Tesla also sells complete solar systems and they will likely sell far more of them them they do cars. Cars for Tesla are upmarket, the solar powered home system with battery pack are mass market and that's where the big dollars are and where probably over the mid term, where the bulk of Tesla profits will come.
Pretty soon, people will not be going solar without also doing batteries and a complete system with a reliable installer is where the market is headed. You can expect Tesla to figure highly in this market, whether they choose to have installers on wages or franchises or a mix, is yet to become apparent.
There is more money for Tesla in solar home power system with battery packs, then there is in just the segment of high end vehicles, cheaper to produce, much larger market, far simpler production. Good thing he picked up the solar panel manufacturer to go with Panasonic batteries and whom ever provides the control systems. Expect revenue from this to overtake cars within the decade. Panasonic expanding production is more to do with the home market than the vehicle market.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen