From what I've read about Panasonic, I think a merger of the two companies would be toxic. Panasonic is a conglomerate with tons of business units, which Tesla would not want to be part of. Tesla would be only interested in their battery unit, but it appears to be the most profitable and most successful of all of Panasonic's business units. Without it, Panasonic looks a lot more bleak (and that could spell bad news for their stock price if they sold their battery unit to Tesla). I'm thinking there's little chance of Panasonic selling their "baby", their battery unit, to anyone.
Another possibility would be for Tesla and Panasonic to form a new battery company.
- Panasonic would "give" their battery unit to this new company and Panasonic would own 50% of the new company
- Tesla Motors would give $500m in cash to the new company and would own 50% of the new company
The benefit to Panasonic would be that this new company they own 1/2 of would secure practically all of Tesla's future battery production.
The benefit to Tesla would be they would be able to continue to work with Panasonic's battery unit (IP, production capacity, manufacturing know-how, etc).
But I know 50/50 ventures rarely work out, so one company would probably have to own the majority.
I totally agree that Panasonic as a whole is a kludge and not very attractive.
But the battery unit is ideal, and I just don't see Panasonic farming any of it out to Tesla. Plus, it would take years of work and billions in investment for Tesla to replicate it, and to a certain extent attempting to do so is to make the same mistake that other automakers have made. The nice thing about Panasonic's battery business is that it is a large, successful business in its own right. It's large and diverse customer base is a big reason that they can afford to be the best in the first place. The innovative ecosystem that they have is more valuable to Tesla than the pure nuts and bolts of building a particular 18650 battery.
So sure, the Panasonic Corporation is a dog, but it's that very crapitude that might let Tesla aquire the battery business at a discount, and then claw shareholder value back by spinning off the dozens of Panasonic business units that they have no interest in.
The main point though is that Tesla needs to start thinking in terms of solutions on this scale. If they are looking at 60k+ Model S/X sales in 2015, vs the ~30k+ they were hoping for at the end of 2012, then they really need to rethink their battery strategy. By 2023 I could easily envision them selling ~2,000,000 cars per year (which is basically what BMW sells now). By that point just the battery portion of their business could have a market value of ~$20 billion.
Not that I necessarily expect this to happen, but it seems possible that if Tesla debuts an attractive GENIII Alpha prototype by the end of the year, and if Q2-Q4 all come in positive, I could see the stock doubling from current levels just on emotional momentum alone. In contrast, it might be a year or more before Abenomics manages to boost Panasonic's financial performance into the black. That might give Tesla a window to acquire Panasonic at a discount compared to where it will be when the market figures out the intrinsic value of its battery business as Tesla is forced to dramatically scale up battery purchases in 2015 and 2016.
As to how realistic any of this is, or whether its even a good idea in the first place, I am still agnostic. But if I were Elon, I'd have a team gaming out a possible Panasonic merger right now. A 5-10 year solution is not going to happen on its own, and if Tesla is forced into putting up a multi-million car long term battery supply contract for bid in 2016, any potential acquisition target is going to sell at a giant premium.
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