Panasonic Holdings is considering building a new factory in the U.S. state of Oklahoma to produce batteries for electric vehicles, according to a source familiar with the plan.
If the plan is formalized, the plant would become the third EV battery factory in the United States after Nevada and Kansas to be opened by the Japanese manufacturer, a major supplier to Tesla, on the back of the expanding EV market in North America.
Panasonic and the Oklahoma state government have concluded a contract stipulating the terms on which the electronics company would become eligible for a subsidy if it built a plant, the source said Sunday.
"It is true we have concluded a contract, but no other details have been decided yet," a Panasonic official said.
The source said Oklahoma is only one of the candidate sites for a new factory and that the agreement does not guarantee any investment by the Japanese company.
Panasonic, which runs its Gigafactory battery production site in Nevada jointly with Tesla, said in July last year it would invest up to around $4 billion to build another factory in Kansas.
Although the Kansas plant has not started operation, the company plans to increase its production capacity for EV batteries to 150 to 200 gigawatts by fiscal 2028, equivalent to three to four times its current output capacity.
The move comes as Panasonic and other battery manufacturers rush to increase production capacity in North America, where demand for automotive batteries is projected to grow rapidly with the expansion of the EV market.