I see it as much more symbiotic than that due to mutual interest. Tesla thinks the factory can deliver 30% cost reduction, but they still want Panasonic to keep improving their cells, just as Panasonic wants Tesla to hit target.
If I were Panasonic I'd be keen, but wary. Tesla has delivered, but delivered late and above price target with both generations. Tesla is asking for a massive investment with a return that depends on the price Tesla can get to with Gen 3.
I need to go somewhat off topic to explain my whole train of though, sorry for the long post. In the end it's totally about the Giga factory.
Except that a 30% cost reduction enables much more than Tesla Gen 3 vehicles.
Actually the issue is today there is zero over production of li-ion for other huge scale usages. That's the real issue.
Consider the China Solar PV dump enabled the Germany mass installation of Solar. We actually need the same to enable mass adoption of grid storage with li-ion packs.
In 2010 Bill Gates stated that if we scavenged all chemical batteries in the world for grid storage, it wouldn't last 10 minutes storing 100% of electricity production, let's say we need to store 5% of production for 24 hrs, those 10 minutes at 100% are now just 200 minutes for 5%, we still need 7x more. So maybe today it would last 20 minutes. We need 24 hours just to get started with a grid running on 50% solar PV + wind.
Even with 2 Giga factories operating at full capacity before Gen 3 hits the market, the world would find good economical use for those batteries, considering all PV+Wind subsidies and tax breaks in play, easy peasy. Ok, maybe I'm going overboard, but I don't think I'm too far from the mark.
I believe we can put 10TWh worth of li-ion battery packs to good use for large scale grid storage. Quickly.
The Giga won't come to full production overnight, it's a 3+ year project after than plant begins to produce until peak capacity is reached, many levers that can be fine tuned.
If we could obtain huge li-ion battery packs, let's say 10GWh for US$ 100/KWh, that's US$ one billion for 10GWh. That should be enough to stabilize electricity production for 100GW worth of Solar PV or 1TW worth of nameplate Wind capacity.
The real pressing problem isn't storing Solar PV produced in the day and use it in the night. The real problem isn't storing wind electrons today for usage tomorrow. The real problem is high efficiency natural gas / coal plants want to run at 100% output, and hydro doesn't have hyper agility in throttling second by second. If wind and solar could have a 3 hour buffer, instead of using very low efficiency load following thermals, we could use high efficiency baseload fossil plants instead (60% efficiency instead of 20-30%).
That's the main reason why I prefer nuclear to solar and wind. The main reason is we're being lied to. There is no economical solution right now to even run a grid with 50% solar PV + wind, because of the lack of battery pack production capacity (regardless of price). That's the reason the German renewables plan has been seriously scaled back.
With 2 Giga factories running at full capacity then we can do the experiment of migrating Hawaii to zero fossil fuels, since their oil thermal plants are very low efficiency, and installing 50GWh worth of batteries plus lots of extra solar PV capacity would make long term economical sense there.
Same for Puerto Rico. And other islands close to the equator (where Solar have negligible discrepancy between the summer and winter solstice in output). What you need is about 300% of peak electricity demand in installed Solar PV (if peak demand is 1GW, then you need 3GW worth of solar PV installed). Add wind turbines if wind is regular enough, could be done without a single wind turbine if wind is too low. Blanket all buildings with good solar view with solar PV. Cover every parking space with a PV canopy, heck, cover streets, roads, highways with PV.
Got it ? Great for solving climate change. Whatever capacity Tesla will actually use is just a bonus.
In actuality I firmly believe Tesla will come through, and before we know it another 2 Gigas will be announced.
I'm solely showing there is zero reason for Panasonic to be concerned. Those in the Li-Ion business are safe until the next gen chemistry enters the market.
