A few months ago, Panasonic and Tesla agreed to build solar panels together if Tesla’s SolarCity acquisition was successful.
Fast forward a few months and the two companies have made good on their word by beginning to build solar panels in SolarCity’s Buffalo, New York facility.
As part of the agreement, Panasonic will build the high-efficiency photovoltaic cells to be purchased by Tesla.
And while production won’t get underway until the summer of 2017, Panasonic expects to be producing 1 gigawatt of solar panels per year by 2019.
As a result, SolarCity is devoted to creating more than 1,400 jobs at its Buffalo site.
On the surface, the whole thing looks like a great collaboration with Panasonic taking care of the capital costs and Tesla making a long-term purchase commitment.
