Toyota, Panasonic form JV to make automotive prismatic batteries

The scope of the joint venture's business 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 vehicle electrification accelerates toward the solving of such environmental issues, batteries are an important element.

The ratio of equity participation in the joint venture will be 51 per cent for Toyota and 49 per cent for Panasonic. The JV will come into being by the end of 2020.

Toyota will transfer equipment and personnel to the joint venture in the areas of development and production engineering related to battery cells.

On the other hand, Panasonic will transfer equipment, other assets, liabilities, personnel and other items to the joint venture in the areas of development, production engineering, manufacturing (at plants in Japan and in Dalian, China), procurement, order receipt and management functions related to the automotive prismatic battery business.

Toyota's Executive Vice President Shigeki Terashi said: "By contributing to the popularization of Toyota's and other automakers' electrified vehicles, we want to help find solutions to issues such as global warming, environment-related challenges, and energy-related challenges."

"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 realisation of a society of mobility that is kind to the environment," said Panasonic's Senior Managing Executive Officer Masahisa Shibata.

Products produced by the joint venture will be sold to various automakers through Panasonic.