Back in November, Panasonic officially announced that it had officially begun construction of its new lithium-ion battery manufacturing factory in De Soto, Kansas, at the Astra Enterprise Park site.
Panasonic already has one EV battery manufacturer site in the US, the Panasonic Energy of North America facility, at the Tesla Gigafactory 1 in Sparks, Nevada.
The company have already invested $4 billion into the new facility in July and was recently approved by Panasonic Holdings Corporation Board of Directors.
The facility will primarily supply batteries to Tesla and will focus on rapidly ramping up the manufacture of Tesla’s 2170 cylindrical lithium-ion batteries, which will power the company’s Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
Panasonic has stated that it is currently producing more than five million battery cells a day in North America and that the plant in Nevada has already produced over 6 billion units.
The facility is also expected to create up to 4,000 jobs and recruitment for the first positions is expected to begin in mid-2023.
Panasonic is set to receive a huge incentive package that is worth up to $829.2 million, including a $500 million investment tax credit that stretched over five years and a $234 million payroll rebate over 10 years.
The factory is planned to be bigger than the already existing facility in Nevada and will help to localise battery production in the US. This is important to automakers as they are then able to qualify for incentivised tax credits.
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