SolarCity Pact With Panasonic Is Redone -- WSJ
17 Agosto 2018 - 4:02AM
Dow Jones News
By Takashi Mochizuki
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (August 17, 2018).
TOKYO -- Tesla Inc. has backed away from an agreement to buy all
of the output from a solar-panel factory it operates with Panasonic
Corp., the Japanese company said Thursday, another sign of the
uncertain outlook for Tesla's SolarCity subsidiary.
Panasonic said it began making solar cells and modules at the
factory in Buffalo, N.Y., in August 2017, under a deal that called
for Tesla to buy the entire output for its home solar-panel
business. But Panasonic said the deal was revised early this year,
and since then it has been selling some of the production to other
panel makers. Tesla is still buying some modules and cells from the
plant as well.
Tesla said it was never obligated to buy the full output of the
Buffalo plant, which it calls Gigafactory 2, and it continues to
have a strong relationship with Panasonic.
"We continue to use cells and solar modules produced in Buffalo
by Panasonic" in Tesla's solar products, a Tesla spokesman said. He
said this was "in line with our contract, which contains no
requirement of exclusivity." The spokesman added that "we
anticipate using the full production capacity of Gigafactory 2 over
time as we reach higher output and installation volumes."
The Buffalo factory is part of SolarCity, which Tesla acquired
in 2016. Solar installations by the business have been slowing as
Tesla retreats from riskier financing arrangements.
The solar business is one of many challenges on the plate of
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who is facing an investigation by
U.S. securities regulators over a tweet saying he had secured
funding to take the electric-car maker private.
The solar business has taken a back seat as Tesla pushes to get
production of its Model 3 vehicle up to speed. In early July, the
company said it had achieved a long-delayed goal of assembling
5,000 of the sedans in about a week.
Panasonic's joint effort with Tesla in the solar business, first
announced in 2016, builds on their cooperation for developing
electric cars since Tesla's early days. The two companies jointly
invested in the Gigafactory facility in Nevada, which supplies
batteries for the Model 3.
Even though demand from Tesla has fallen short, Panasonic said
overall demand for its U.S.-made solar-panel components remained
intact because of tariffs the Trump administration placed on
imported panels earlier this year. That has hit Chinese-made
panels, which previously had a big share of the U.S. market.
The Osaka-based industrial and consumer-electronics conglomerate
had said it planned to spend Yen30 billion ($271 million) to beef
up production lines at the Tesla-owned facility in Buffalo, and on
Thursday it said the plan was unchanged.
Panasonic's solar business in its home market has been losing
money after the Japanese government cut subsidies and demand for
panels stagnated. Analysts said the contract change with Tesla
raised concerns over whether Panasonic could face similar problems
in the U.S. Panasonic's shares fell 2.1% in Tokyo trading on
Thursday after the Nikkei newspaper reported on the contract
revision.
Corrections & Amplifications Tesla Inc. backed off an
agreement to buy all the output from a solar-panel factory it
operates with Panasonic Corp. An earlier version of this article
misspelled Tesla's name in the headline as Telsa. (Aug. 16,
2018)
Write to Takashi Mochizuki at takashi.mochizuki@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 17, 2018 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
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