Why would you want to corner the market in a tech that is not a good fit for cars? The whole point of the 2170 is that its the proper format for cars. I think there is this idea that Tesla owes something to Panasonic and should continue to buy cells but this deal was made with full knowledge that the two companies would transition to 2170. I have no idea what Panasonic's 18650 business is aside from Tesla or how much of the equipment can be converted for 2170, but it really doesn't matter because Panasonic made the deal knowing what the end result was going to be. The 2170 cells clearly perform better from looking at the model 3 and what they have store for us with the Semi and Roadster. I cant imagine they wouldnt want to switch as soon as its reasonably able to. A big limiter is the ramp of cell and pack production. They might need to extend the contract to allow time for that alone, or the s-curve could kick in and and the change could come quicker. The point is that none of this is a surprise to Tesla or Panasonic. This would have been discussed before the Gigafactory was conceived and broke ground. Why would Panasonic want to give up its current contract unless its Gigafactory deal is much better for both. The savings from shipping of these extremely dense cells alone must make the 2170 that much cheaper for the partners.
I was thinking a bit about the IP and how Tesla gives out the patents. This is nice and all but its fairly meaninglessness as the tech is not all that super complicated and not hard for competitors to just take it apart and copy it. The real tech and IP is the manufacturing systems. The machine that makes the machine and really the software and machine learning that makes it all go. Ghromann and Tesla's other automation acquisitions are what this company is truly becoming. Its not a car company and its not a energy company and its not even a software company, though software is a huge part of what they do. Tesla is becoming a highly automated factory design and implementation company that currently is focused on the Auto and Energy industries. This is where all their secret sauce lies and its the only way to really do it. The old school autos will react at some point and they can make a lot of cars really well and they can do it at a massive loss for a very long time before they run out of cash. Tesla must be do the same thing but profitably and their cars must be better because they are trying to take market share. Tesla is actually in a much better position because when they take share, someone loses it, when GM takes share with its EVs, its going to be from other GM models. Models that used to be profitable before they had to split all their resources to build EVs. They are going to have to sell 4 ICEv just to make up for the loss on each EV. They are actually better off having Tesla take their market share, then lose it to themselves with negative margin cars. They truly are in bad shape and I have never seen anything that makes me think they can adapt fast enough. They can adapt, it only took about 20+ years to become competitive with Toyota after they ate their lunch in the 70s. And they still arnt really competitive, they just arnt losing as badly.
