Panasonic Won't Make Batteries For Tesla In China

Panasonic Corporation PCRFY has no plans to make car batteries for Tesla Inc TSLA at its new Shanghai plant, the company’s President Kazuhiro Tsuga said on Friday, as reported by The Nikkei.

The electric vehicle maker Tesla will have to either use the batteries Panasonic already makes at Tesla’s “gigafactory” in Nevada or find another supplier in China, Tsuga told reporters ahead of an investor presentation in Tokyo.

"It's up to Tesla to decide whether it will use batteries we produce at the Gigafactory in Nevada or those made by Chinese companies," Tsuga said.

Panasonic is the only battery supplier for Tesla at the moment, as noted by the Nikkei.

Tesla got the Chinese government’s approval to build a gigafactory, which the company’s CEO Elon Musk defines as a “machine that builds machine,” in the country in October 2018, as reported by TechCrunch at the time.

The company started taking orders in October for its Model 3 car made at the under-construction Shanghai factory.

Tesla announced earlier this month that its fourth gigafactory would be located in Berlin. The California-based company has two gigafactories in Nevada and New York in the U.S.

Price Action

Tesla’s shares closed 0.74% higher at $354.83 in the run-up to the event on Wednesday. The shares traded further 0.64% up in the after-hours market.

Panasonic closed 1.45% lower at $9.12 at the Tokyo Exchange on Friday.