Last month, Porsche said that it wouldn’t be quite as profitable in the short-term due to a significant investment of €1 billion and the hiring of 1000 workers to start making all-electric cars, more especially, to make its upcoming Mission E.
The German luxury automaker, which is part of the Volkswagon Group, has yet to announce any details of its battery pack other than what we can see on the picture above, but today we learn that the battery supply contract now comes down to a competition between Panasonic and Bosch.
According to Bloomberg, Bosch’s bid is more expensive than its Japanese counterpart’s, but logistic costs would be lower since the German electronic giant is significantly closer.
Porsche still has some time to decide considering it plans to bring the Mission E to market only toward the end of the decade, but a spokesperson alluded that a decision could be announced during the annual earnings conference later today.
While Panasonic is already an important battery supplier for electric carmakers through its partnership with Tesla, Bosch is not yet a big player in the field, but the auto parts giant has been heavily investing in battery technology, especially since acquiring solid-state battery startup Seeo.
The technology has yet to be used in commercial applications and it’s unknown if solid-state batteries are part of the Porsche proposal, but Bosch has made a significant investment to bring the new battery technology to market by 2020, which is around the time of the release of the Mission E.While in the case of Panasonic, it will be interesting to know if they are going with cylindrical battery cells, like the ones it supplies to Tesla, or with pouch battery cells, like the ones it plans to build at a new $412 million battery factory for electric vehicles in China.
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