Panasonic and Mazda have jointly announced that they’ve agreed to enter into discussions on establishing a medium- to long-term partnership to meet demand for battery EVs and automotive batteries in a rapidly expanding market.
These discussions have a view toward Panasonic supplying Mazda with automotive cylindrical lithium-ion batteries manufactured at Panasonic Energy’s plants in Japan and North America, and Mazda installing batteries procured from Panasonic Energy in battery EVs scheduled to be launched in the latter half of the 2020 decade.
Kazuo Tadanobu, President, CEO of Panasonic Energy, stated, “As the automotive industry rapidly advances electrification and is leading in this technology, collaboration with Mazda will be a major step toward the achievement of our mission of realizing a society in which the pursuit of happiness and a sustainable environment are harmonized. With our superior technology and extensive experience, we will drive growth of the lithium-ion battery industry and further accelerate our efforts to achieve zero emissions.”
Masahiro Moro, Director and Senior Managing Executive Officer of Mazda, said, “As part of our electrification initiatives, Mazda is working with its partners in three phases to flexibly respond to changes in regulatory trends, consumer needs, and other areas. We are delighted to collaborate with Panasonic Energy, which has been a pioneer in automotive lithium-ion batteries, developing high-quality products. We will keep contributing to curbing global warming through various initiatives including our electrification strategy.”
See also: https://www.carguide.ph/2023/08/subaru-panasonic-enter-discussion-for.html
ReplyDeleteOne thing Mazda and Subaru find interest in developing so-called "EVs" is that both car manufacturers and Panasonic are part of Toyota's umbrella, since Toyota owns Subaru and Mazda as Toyota owns Panasonic therefore these brands end up working with each other and have their synergies to run patiently but well on the other hand.
As I could expect that the "batteries" being supplied by Panasonic to Mazda could also be the same "batteries" found in Nissan "EVs", especially with those blended with an internal combustion engine (ICE) like the Kicks E-Power (as the Nissan Qashqai also uses that technology and since the Qashqai is primarily for Europe then the Qashqai is not officially sold in Southeast Asia and also Japan). But in addition Nissan and Mazda used to share each other's mechanical components while Mazda was part of Ford's umbrella in the past, as Ford also used Nissan-developed automatic transmissions in their (Ford's) U.S. and Canada market-only products (to which half of them are also shared with Mazdas per tech) while Mazda did the same way as both three (Nissan, Mazda and Ford) were responsible for establishing JATCO (Japan Automatic Transmission Company) in 1970. (JATCO was responsible for supplying automatic transmissions for Nissan, Mazda and Ford cars in the beginning but later JATCO ended up being a supplier of ATs for smaller-scale Japanese carmakers like Suzuki and Mitsubishi and even non-Japanese car brands apart from Ford like Hyundai/Kia, General Motors aka GM, Stellantis and etc.)