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Rumor has it that the battery giant Panasonic might not re-invest in Tesla's Gigafactory for the sake of investment risk, according to the Japanese media. By contrast, Reuters broke news that Panasonic said on July 2 that upon the request of Tesla, Panasonic might consider to re-invest in a battery Gigafactory. Thus, the previous rumor of no more investment was busted.
Currently, Panasonic and Tesla are jointly operating the Gigafactory in Nevada, USA. Panasonic has invested about US $1.6 billion (about NT $48.9 billion) in the factory. On July 2, in a media conference, Yoshio Ito, the president of automotive and industrial system company at Panasonic Corporation, was asked whether the firm will re-invest in a Gigafactory. According to Ito, if Panasonic is requested to do so, it will of course consider the option.
On July 1, Tesla reached its goal for 5,000 Model 3 electric vehicles of production per week.
Currently, Panasonic is the sole battery supplier for existing Tesla models. In Japan and USA, there are Giga-factories manufacturing automobile batteries for Tesla.
Recently, Tesla has expressed that as Tesla Model 3's production is accelerated, there is occasionally a shortage of battery supply. Thus, when Tesla plans to expand the capacity of battery production, Panasonic is certainly likely to be a potential investor.
(Article by TechNews; Image credit: Tesla)