Sanyo and Panasonic aren't just about electronics products that you see at the store.
Sanyo provides battery for hybrids and electric vehicles to Honda, Ford, Tesla and VW. Panasonic provides it to Toyota, GM, etc. Between the two of them, a Panasonic-Sanyo merger will dominate this new market.
The next-generation of Li-on batteries, that are suppose to be suitable for vehicles (from safety and performance) perspectives are suppose to be a HUGE market. This isn't $20-30 batteries we're talking about, but components that cost THOUSANDS of dollars, in hundreds of thousands of cars. And its a growing market. Toyota and Honda expect 10% of their sales to come from hybrids, and GM is introducing the Volt; VW, Nissan, Hyundai are all releasing hybrid models in the next few years and they will all need batteries. Not to mention the growing market for electric vehicles.
Sanyo has converted itself into a 'green' company over the last half-decade, and have moved-away from low-margin CE devices to thing like solar panels as well. So Panasonic has a lot to gain in that department.
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Sanyo and Panasonic aren't just about electronics products that you see at the store.
Sanyo provides battery for hybrids and electric vehicles to Honda, Ford, Tesla and VW. Panasonic provides it to Toyota, GM, etc. Between the two of them, a Panasonic-Sanyo merger will dominate this new market.
The next-generation of Li-on batteries, that are suppose to be suitable for vehicles (from safety and performance) perspectives are suppose to be a HUGE market. This isn't $20-30 batteries we're talking about, but components that cost THOUSANDS of dollars, in hundreds of thousands of cars. And its a growing market. Toyota and Honda expect 10% of their sales to come from hybrids, and GM is introducing the Volt; VW, Nissan, Hyundai are all releasing hybrid models in the next few years and they will all need batteries. Not to mention the growing market for electric vehicles.
Sanyo has converted itself into a 'green' company over the last half-decade, and have moved-away from low-margin CE devices to thing like solar panels as well. So Panasonic has a lot to gain in that department.