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from the at-least-they've-actually-built-some-before dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes:
Buffalo News reports that Solar City (Tesla) now plan to drop Silevo's high efficiency cell design in favor of a well tested Panasonic design. Article also covers employment in the Buffalo area, money supplied for the factory and equipment by NY State. The change of course seems to be at least partly to changes in the solar panel market and also problems with Solar City's business model.
"Tesla will oversee factory operations in Buffalo, and will manufacture solar roof tiles there," a SolarCity spokesperson said Tuesday. "Panasonic will manufacture solar cells at the factory, with support from the Silevo team, including cells for the solar roof tiles that will be a hybrid of the Panasonic and Silevo architecture. Panasonic will also manufacture solar panels in Buffalo."
The new arrangements reflect deep changes that have taken place, both at the company and within the solar marketplace, since SolarCity first bought Silevo nearly three years ago. The way the solar panel factory will operate has been in flux ever since Tesla said that it planned to partner with Panasonic in the operation of the Buffalo gigafactory in the months leading up to its November acquisition of SolarCity.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday March 09 2017, @11:37PM
Panasonic have a really good, solid design in the 18650B, it's a more conservative choice than whatever Silevo are peddling, but when you're breaking new ground you probably want to go with the more conservative, proven designs. You can roll out the bleeding edge stuff later when you've proven the whole thing works OK. Samsung, take note (7, specifically).