Panasonic is in a very good company position. It is ramping up production of Solar cells. Since it will make the solar cells in the U.S., it will not be affected negatively by a possible Trump tariff on Solar Imports. Also, Its Electric Car Battery business is taking off. What more could you want?

Panasonic Ramps Up Solar Cell Production at Tesla's Buffalo Gigafactory

In December 2016, Panasonic and Tesla finalized an agreement to begin manufacturing solar PV cells and modules at the "Gigafactory 2" in Buffalo, New York. Under the arrangement, Panasonic agreed to cover the capital costs associated with the factory and Tesla agreed to purchase Panasonic's custom manufactured solar products.

From article, (Last summer, Tesla CTO JB Straubel said solar roof production at Gigafactory 2 would ramp up “in a substantial way” by the end of 2017, and increased the company's goal to achieve 2 gigawatts of solar panel capacity per year. But as the new year arrived, the status of Tesla's solar tile production was still murky.

Tesla confirmed today, however, that solar roof manufacturing began in Buffalo in December. The company also said that it is now starting Solar Roof Textured and Smooth installations for non-employee homeowners.

Panasonic’s cell manufacturing business in Buffalo is one of the few examples of solar cell manufacturing taking place in the U.S. and certainly the most recent cell production facility to launch in the country. That’s interesting in the context of the Section 201 solar trade case.

Panasonic’s two biggest high-efficiency solar panel competitors, SunPower and LG, both manufacture abroad, which means they could be subject to new import tariffs, depending on how President Trump rules on the Section 201 case on January 26. When asked if Panasonic would sell its tariff-free cells to companies other than Tesla, Fannon said: “In the best of all worlds, if we could satisfy everything Tesla wants, yes.”

As production at Gigafactory 2 increases, so will employment. In October, Panasonic employed 182 people at the Buffalo factory. By the end of the year, that number nearly doubled to more than 300. In a few weeks' time, if everything stays on track, “We will be cranking up mass production and nearly doubling that employment number again,” said Fannon.

Employment numbers are important because they’re tied to funding for the Gigafactory 2. New York state committed $750 million to building and outfitting the 1.2-million-square-foot facility on the condition that the factory create more than 1,460 jobs in the Buffalo area by the time it's fully operational.

According to Tesla, there are roughly 500 employees at the Gigafactory 2 today.

Last year at CES, Panasonic and Tesla announced that battery production had officially kicked off at the Gigafactory outside of Reno. But the year was marred by delays, which caused Tesla to miss its production targets for the Model 3. The battery module assembly line was cited as the primary constraint due to the complexity of the module design and the automated manufacturing process.

Last fall, Panasonic executives said they were confident the bottlenecks were nearly worked out. The problem, however, seems to lie more with Tesla, which is in charge of packing Panasonic’s battery cells into modules and the modules into packs. CEO Elon Musk recently camped out on the roof of the Gigafactory while working through production issues.

Panasonic already supplies batteries for Toyota’s Prius, “and now we’re teaming up with Toyota to explore the future of EV battery technology,” said Panasonic North America Chairman & CEO Thomas Gebhardt, speaking at CES this week.

“The initial focus of this partnership is on the existing lithium-ion technology,” he said. “But we also intend to explore solid-state battery technology, which could become the next-generation technology for electric vehicles.”)