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Kenji Tamura, an executive officer in charge of Panasonic's
automotive and industrial systems business, said he expects the
firm's annual automobile battery sales to grow to 400 billion
yen ($3.98 billion) in the business year through March 2019 from
180 billion yen in the year ended March 2016.
The company sees combined annual sales of automobile batteries
and energy storage products to grow to 500 billion yen, around
2.5 times sales in the last fiscal year, he said.
Tamura also said Panasonic planned to bring forward its $1.6
billion investment in Tesla's $5 billion "Gigafactory" plant in
the U.S. state of Nevada upon the request of the electric car
maker, to meet strong orders for Tesla's upcoming Model 3 sedan.
Panasonic is the exclusive supplier of batteries for the Model
3, Tesla's first mass-market car.
Citing "tremendous demand," Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk in
April said his firm planned to boost total vehicle production to
500,000 cars in 2018, two years earlier than its original
target.
(Reporting by Yoshiyasu Shida; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
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