According to a report from Nikkei Asia, Panasonic is planning to build a new battery factory in Kansas to make high-capacity cells for the electric car company.
Laura Kelly, a Democrat, is expected to announce details on the Panasonic plant at a news conference today.
The Gigafactory is a battery factory located outside of Reno, Nevada, and was previously invested in by Panasonic andTesla. The facility was slow to achieve profitability due to high defect rates and slower-than- anticipated mass production.
Along with its ambitions to ramp up vehicle production at new factories near Austin, Texas, and Berlin, there is a growing appetite for battery cells by the company. The number of vehicles delivered by the company increased by 81% from the year before. With inflation, increased electric vehicle production, and supply chain problems, the cost of battery materials is going up.
A local news outlet, the Kansas City Star, previously reported that Panasonic may locate its new factory in De Soto, Kansas. Requests for comment from the governor's office and Panasonic were not responded to.
The company has mostly relied on Panasonic and other vendors for battery cells that go into their cars' high-voltage battery packs, and into the company's energy storage systems for home, commercial and grid scale installations.
The company is trying to produce and use its own battery cells. This objective was helped by the acquisition of Canadian battery manufacturing companies.
In October of 2021, the company said it would change the chemistry of the batteries in its vehicles to useLFP cells instead of NCA cells.
In the U.S., Panasonic is not the only company making batteries.
There are plans to invest more than $2 billion into a new battery plant in Michigan. A battery plant in Indiana will be the site of a $2.5 billion investment by the two companies.
According to research by Canalys, global sales of battery electric vehicles amounted to 4.5 million units in the year 2021.
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