After almost nine years as chief executive officer of Panasonic Corp., Kazuhiro Tsuga says he is handing off a leaner business with enough cash to invest in new areas such as overseas manufacturing, upgraded battery technology for its partnership with Tesla Inc. and air-cleaning and conditioning.
Panasonic is embarking on a corporate revamp that will usher in automotive business head Yuki Kusumi as CEO from April, who will then spend a year reshaping the iconic electronics conglomerate into a holding company. The new structure, in turn, will make it easier to decide where to invest for long-term growth, Tsuga said in an interview this week.
One of these areas is Panasonic’s business of supplying batteries for electric vehicles. There, it is looking at several capital-intensive projects, including a new battery factory in Europe and mass production of a more powerful lithium-ion battery cell.