Toyota and Panasonic to Establish JV for EV Lithium-ion Prismatic Batteries
Toyota Motor Corporation and Panasonic Corporation signed a joint venture agreement to establish an EV prismatic battery business by the end of 2020. Toyoda wants to use the prismatic lithium-ion batteries in its Prius (pictured above), and the venture will sell to other EV makers.
Lithium-ion batteries for EVs can be made in either cylindrical or prismatic configurations. Prismatic batteries are square and can, therefore, allow more power in a given space compared to cylindrical EV batteries including those of EV maker TESLA. However, prismatic batteries are significantly more difficult to produce.
The founding of the joint venture requires the government approval in countries and regions in which the venture will do business. Toyoda will hold a 51% equity stake in the business, and Panasonic will hold the remaining 49%.
The joint venture's operations will cover research, development, production engineering, manufacturing, procurement, order receipt, and management related to automotive prismatic lithium-ion batteries, solid-state batteries, and next-generation batteries.
As part of the agreement, Toyota will transfer equipment and personnel to the joint venture within the areas of development and production engineering related to battery cells. Panasonic will transfer equipment, other assets, liabilities, personnel, and other items to the joint venture in the sectors of development, production engineering, manufacturing (at plants in Japan and in Dalian, China), procurement, order receipt, and management functions associated with the automotive prismatic battery business.
According to Toyoda, in total about 3,500 employees from both companies will transfer to the joint venture (as of the end of December 2018). Products that the joint venture makes will be sold to various automakers through Panasonic.
As people begin to switch to using and buying electric vehicles, numerous battery-related challenges must be taken on, including addressing issues of cost, safety, charging time, and energy density. Another key issue is guaranteeing a stable supply as well as having practical recycling infrastructure for such batteries.
Since Toyota and Panasonic began studying the feasibility of a joint automotive prismatic battery business in 2017, the two companies have developed high-capacity and high-output EV prismatic batteries that boast a low cost.
Under the terms of the joint venture agreement Toyota is to contribute:
- know-how and market data related to electric vehicles,
- advanced technologies for solid-state batteries and more, and
- Toyota-style manufacturing capabilities (monozukuri);
Battery maker Panasonic is to contribute:
- technologies related to high-capacity and high-output batteries that are high-quality and extremely safe,
- mass-production technologies, and
- a customer base both in Japan and overseas.
In this way, the joint venture intends to become the leader in battery-development and battery-manufacturing.
To this end, Toyota and Panasonic plan to accelerate the development of high-capacity and high-output battery prismatic lithium-ion batteries. Moreover, Toyota and Panasonic intend to share their production-engineering resources and monozukuri know-how to establish a high-quality, low-cost, stable supply structure. Finally, the companies said that they will use the venture's massive scale of production and purchasing to lower related costs.
Toyota Executive Vice President Shigeki Terashi said, "Together with Panasonic, we want to hone our competitiveness in batteries, which represent one of the core technologies of electrified vehicles." Terashi added, "We have high expectations for the new company, including—as we aim to deliver ever-better electrified vehicles to even more customers—its role in fulfilling our plans for the popularization of electrified vehicles* (including achieving Toyota annual global sales of more than 5.5 million units of electrified vehicles), which we announced at the end of 2017."
Panasonic Senior Managing Executive Officer Masahisa Shibata said, "Uniting with Toyota's battery and production-engineering technologies provides us an excellent opportunity for being able to evolve our automotive prismatic batteries, which have an established track record of performance and safety, faster than ever. Through the electrification of vehicles, we want to accelerate our contribution to the realization of a society of mobility that is kind to the environment."
