Panasonic Corp, which makes lithium-ion batteries for Tesla Motors Inc’s cars, is to begin selling batteries that power homes in Europe, starting in Germany, where people are given greater incentives to switch to solar-generated electricity.
The push into international markets with home batteries is to put the Japanese company into direct competition with flagship customer Tesla, which in May unveiled a suite of batteries to store electricity for homes and businesses.
Later, Panasonic is to move on to France, the UK and other markets, Panasonic Europe chief executive officer Laurent Abadie said in an interview at the IFA International Consumer Electronics Show in Berlin on Wednesday. The company said it has not decided when it would start sales in Europe.
In Japan, where such batteries are already available, they can help households replace as much as 70 percent of energy usage by storing what is generated from solar panels, Abadie said.
The company’s goal is to replace 100 percent of energy taken from the electricity grid eventually.
“We are not far from achieving 100 percent in the future,” he said.
“[The time it would take to reach that goal] depends on the region. If you are in the Nordics, you need a lot of energy in the winter, you do not get any light,” he added.
At IFA, Panasonic said it would start pre-orders this month for Nubo, a security camera that connects through mobile networks, allowing users to monitor places without WiFi.
The company also announced a new high-end 65-inch television that it said can render deeper blacks than the plasma TVs it stopped selling.
Panasonic has said that the home-energy storage industry could generate ￥10 billion (US$83 million) in revenue outside of the Japanese market by fiscal year 2018. The Osaka-based company is to start selling the systems in Australia next month.
Meanwhile, luxury electric carmaker Tesla is to begin producing the “lower cost” Model 3 in two years, Tesla founder Elon Musk said on Wednesday.
However, production of the car, which at an estimated US$35,000 would be half the price of the popular Model S, depends on Musk’s group opening its new, multi-billion-US dollar Gigafactory battery plant in Nevada by that time, he said.
“Model 3, our smaller and lower cost sedan will start production in about two years. Fully operational Gigafactory needed,” he said in a tweet.
Additional reporting by AFP
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