A hybrid-battery joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic is raising annual production at its Japanese plants to about a million by next year, officials said on Friday.
Panasonic EV Energy Co, 60 percent owned by Toyota Motor Corp and 40 percent by electronics maker Panasonic Corp, makes batteries for the new Prius hybrid, which has been a hit since rolling out last month, becoming the best-selling vehicle in Japan last month.
The company, based in Kosai, central Japan, already controls 80 percent of the global market in such auto batteries. It is building its third Japanese plant, in Miyazaki, southwestern Japan, which will be running by next year, said Masashi Otani, a general manager.
Panasonic EV made about 500,000 battery packs last year.
Officials said battery pack sizes vary with car models, but are counted by using the Prius battery pack as a standard unit.
The growth in hybrids has taken off only in recent months.
The company, founded in 1996, the year before the Prius went on sale, took until last year to reach cumulative sales of 2 million battery packs.
Panasonic EV does business with other companies, including Honda Motor Co and Chrysler LLC. But officials said its business with General Motors Corp tapered off to zero because of the US automaker’s financial woes.
Panasonic is also acquiring Japanese rival Sanyo Electric Co, and the combination is likely to be a plus, said Eric Lee, a Barclays Capital analyst in Tokyo.
Through its Toyota joint venture, Panasonic could eventually account for nearly 90 percent of nickel-metal hydride batteries used in Prius cars and about 35 percent to 40 percent of lithium-ion batteries, planned for Toyota’s plug-in hybrid available in limited numbers later this year, Lee said in a report this week.
“If the Sanyo-Panasonic transaction is completed, the new combined entity could potentially become the most active major Japanese consumer electronics company in automotive battery technology,” the report said.
INFRINGEMENT: The investigation comes after a complaint from Vicor Corp, with the company seeking a limited exclusion order as well as cease-and-desist orders, the ITA said The US International Trade Commission (USITC) has launched a Section 337 investigation naming Taiwanese technology companies, including Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海), Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), as respondents. The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) pledged assistance if needed. The USITC said on Friday in a statement that it had voted to institute an investigation under Section 337 of the US Tariff Act of 1930 into certain vertical power delivery systems, related components and computing devices incorporating such systems. The investigation covers 20 companies from Taiwan, China, Germany and the US, the commission said, adding that it
IN GOOD FAITH: Lai said he appreciates Micron’s commitment to Taiwan and that it would continue expanding its investment in the country, while also working with labor President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday called for US memory maker Micron Technology Inc and its workers to negotiate “sincerely” ahead of a possible strike by the company’s union in Taiwan. Last week, a Taiwanese union representing workers at Micron said it had secured authorization from its members to strike over a dispute concerning the company’s bonus scheme, escalating a labor conflict at the chipmaker’s largest manufacturing hub. Micron employs about 15,000 people in Taiwan and has said it invested more than NT$1.6 trillion (US$49.6 billion) in the country. Speaking in Taichung at the opening of a new Micron advanced assembly and testing facility,
A man charged along with Super Micro Computer Inc co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw (廖益賢) of conspiring to send cutting-edge chips to China in violation of US export controls pleaded guilty, court documents said. Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun (孫廷瑋), a former outside contractor described by US authorities as a “fixer” who allegedly aided in the sales, pleaded guilty on Thursday at a hearing in federal court in New York as part of an agreement with prosecutors, court filings showed. Prosecutors claimed the men were part of a scheme to send Nvidia Corp-powered servers to an unnamed Southeast Asian company and then divert them to
Microsoft Corp chief executive officer Satya Nadella said companies should treat powerful artificial intelligence (AI) models as potential insider threats, assume they could be compromised and create an “emergency brake” system to prevent agentic models from going rogue. Nadella said that those deploying advanced AI should not rely on assurances from model makers. “We must assume a model is compromised and contain it from the start,” Nadella wrote on Saturday in a post on X. “Think of it like an emergency brake. An authorized person should always be able to pause or shut down a model mid-task.” The statement comes as Anthropic PBC
RSS