Media Reports, page-59

Panasonic Energy is building a pipeline of 2 terawatt-hours (TWh) of battery and raw material supplies for Tesla as part of a new mandate from the Elon Musk-led company, according to Chief Technology Officer Shoichiro Watanabe. Panasonic will need to build up its battery supply chain including mining to meet the goal, Watanabe said at the Sydney Energy Forum. The move comes as Panasonic plans to spend $4 billion to build a second gigafactory in Kansas to target growth in the US auto market. The Japanese battery producer is Tesla’s largest supplier due to the Nevada gigafactory

Ford could need almost a fifth of the projected supply of Tier One global battery capacity by 2026, if it is to meet its goal of selling over 2 million electric vehicles, according to a Benchmark analysis. The legacy automaker said it had secured 60 gigawatt hours of annual battery capacity to enable it to produce 600,000 electric vehicles by 2023 and 70% of the battery capacity to support the 2026 goal. Assuming the 2 million are full electric vehicles with a 100 kWh battery pack this equates to around 200 GWh of cells a year by 2026.

Falling cobalt, nickel and copper prices could ease battery pricing pressures this year for automakers, as fears of a global recession and resurgence of Covid-19 in China weigh on raw material markets. Chinese nickel sulphate prices fell by 11.2% in June from a month earlier, according to Benchmark’s Nickel Price Assessment, while cobalt sulphate prices fell by 10% from May. Meanwhile, copper prices are trading at their lowest levels in 19 months. The lower prices may offer some reprieve for automakers, who have had to pay more for battery cells over the past year due to rising prices on raw materials