According to Reuters, Panasonic Holdings CEO Yuki Kusumi stated on Tuesday local time that the Japanese conglomerate is pushing forward the localization of its U.S. supply chain for energy storage systems, with plans to produce battery cells at its Kansas plant to pivot toward supplying data center clients.
During a roundtable interview held in Tokyo, Kusumi remarked, “The majority of our customers for energy storage systems are based in the United States, so we see practical merit in building a full end-to-end supply chain domestically in the U.S. wherever feasible.”
Earlier this month, Panasonic disclosed that its energy division’s manufacturing site in Kansas is set to commence mass production of battery cells dedicated to data center applications in the fiscal year ending March 2029. The same factory currently manufactures automotive power batteries for Tesla.
Amid sluggish demand across the U.S. electric vehicle market, major automakers and battery manufacturers have been repurposing battery production lines to roll out energy storage products, catering to surging power consumption requirements driven by the artificial intelligence sector.
Kusumi also noted that Panasonic has no immediate plans to produce lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. He added that LFP technology aligns poorly with the company’s strategic focus on distributed energy storage solutions designed to mitigate power peak loads for individual servers, whereas LFP cells are better suited for large-scale centralized backup energy storage deployments.
LFP batteries carry lower production costs than high-nickel ternary cells widely adopted for electric vehicles in North America, making them prevalent across the energy storage industry.
Kusumi mentioned that despite lingering tensions between China and Japan, Panasonic has not encountered shortages in raw material supplies sourced from China.
(Reprinted from https://news.eccn.com/）