
Tesla and Panasonic to Collaborate on Photovoltaic Cell - ot
https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-and-panasonic-collaborate/?utm_campaign=GL_Blog_101616&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social
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julianpye
Panasonic suffered so much by its committee based product decisions that it
had to leave the consumer space as its core business. The decision to let
high-risk Tesla lead a Japanese electronic giants manufacturing power as
visionaire is currently the most exciting cultural decision by an Asian
corporation. Cultural because by doing so Tsuga-san (Panasonic's CEO and my
former boss when he was in charge of DVD and Blu-Ray) left the corporation's
1000 year paternalistic consumer product plan (no joke) of the founder far
behind.

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m12k
Serious question: I've heard about these very, very, long term business plans
made by Japanese companies before but I've no idea what they look like or why
they make them. Do they seriously believe that any part of the plan further
away than a few decades will have any resemblance to reality? Are founders and
CEOs thought to be oracles of some kind?

"2245: Our company will be first to market with a practical application of the
latest breakthrough in particle physics, growing to become a leading provider
of teleportation services for logistics and business travel"

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anexprogrammer
What's remarkable is how little there is on the web, and how empty most of
those are. I caught a programme that discussed these briefly a few months
back, then followed with some googling. I found out almost nothing except
Japan has a lot of old companies.

As for the plans? That they're to balance short termism and identify long term
trends to keep the company in existance. Could have got that much from
guesswork. If I want to know more I think I'd have to learn Japanese.

Presumably leads to things like Toyota's fuel cell ambitions, and zero carbon
factories in 50 years.

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Animats
Solar City's big thing with their Buffalo factory was that they were going to
make their own solar cells. Solar City bought Silevo for $200 million in 2014.
Silevo supposedly had a "breakthrough technology"[1], which would allow Solar
City to compete with cheap solar cells from China. That was the previous
story.

The new story that Solar City will now buy solar cells from Panasonic, but
only if Tesla buys Solar City. Silevo is no longer mentioned. Does this mean
the Silevo technology didn't work out? Or that Solar City's financial problems
mean they can't afford to be in the solar cell business?

Something big and negative happened that the press release isn't mentioning.

[1] [http://silevosolar.com/?cat=11](http://silevosolar.com/?cat=11)

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Rafert
Afaik Tesla needs their money to ramp up production on cars, so it doesn't
seem that strange to assume that Tesla will license said breakthrough tech to
Panasonic so they can manufacture it.

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dayaz36
How is licensing it going to save them money? They've already bought the
technology and the manufacturing facility

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nardi
It doesn't save them money in the long run. However, in the short run, it
saves them a bunch of money, since they are simply promising to buy panels
from Panasonic, and they don't have to pay up front for the machinery, labor,
and raw materials to produce them.

This is a big deal--many have been wondering where Tesla is going to get all
of the cash from, and now they don't need quite so much cash.

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abalone
Interesting.. why Buffalo? Are they getting tax incentives?

There's no mention of partnering with U of Buffalo but there is a pretty major
10 year tax break for tech companies that do.[1]

[1] [https://startup.ny.gov/Business-Growth](https://startup.ny.gov/Business-
Growth)

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spqr0a1
They are getting $750 million of incentives.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Billion#Government_inv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Billion#Government_investigations)

The project awarding the incentive is under state and federal investigations
and at least one key official (Alain Kaloyeros) involved has been suspended
without pay.

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jakozaur
More on factory in Buffalo itself:
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600770/10-breakthrough-
te...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600770/10-breakthrough-
technologies-2016-solarcitys-gigafactory/)

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KaiserPro
Its an interesting admission that their own solar tech isn't good enough.

