The battery manufacturing plant built by Panasonic near Kansas City, Kansas will have a new goal according to a company announcement.
The Japanese consumer electronics giant said it will convert the electric vehicle battery cell plant at De Soto to make batteries for data center applications, and the change will begin in the third quarter of 2029.
“As a global leader in battery innovation, Panasonic Energy is constantly evaluating new opportunities to deliver high-quality products to the market. In addition to meeting our existing EV battery customer commitments, we are exploring options to use some of our U.S. production capacity to address the growing need for data center energy storage,” explained a company official in contact with OK Energy Today.
“Panasonic Energy built our wholly owned lithium-ion battery facility in Kansas as part of our long-term commitment to investing in American manufacturing and advancing the EV industry in the U.S. This facility is designed to be agile and responsive to the market and our diverse customers’ needs.”
The company official explained Panasonic Energy is in the beginning stages of planning its data center battery cell production in Kansas.
“It is part of a $2.18 billion-dollar global investment, and the first data center battery cells are anticipated to be produced in mid to late 2028 or early 2029. EV battery cell production will continue at the Kansas facility.”
The $4 billion Panasonic plant is the one lost by Oklahoma in heated economic competition with Kansas in 2022.
Kansas won the decisive race in a competition of which state offered the best financial incentives. Kansas approved more than $1 billion in incentives while Oklahoma’s offer was about $700 million. The Oklahoma legislation, called the Large-scale Economic Activity and Development Act, was a $698 million financial incentive package to try and recruit the plant to be located near Tulsa.
Panasonic took the Kansas offer and opened the De Soto plant in July 2025. The company has another EV battery plant in Sparks, Nevada. The two plants had combined production of 73 GWh a year.
According to Energy Storage News, Panasonic’s conversion to data center batteries came in a June 8 investor presentation in which the company laid out details to repurpose the EV battery production lines in Japan for data center applications, ramp up and convert the Kansas factory and expand module plants in Mexico for data center battery energy storage system (BESS) applications.
Energy Storage reported the slower than expected adoption of EVs in the US led to the repurposing of the Kansas factory along with the foreign entity of concern FEOC) restrictions imposed by the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ (OBBBA). It is a trend with other companies as well. The joint venture between General Motors and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution is repurposing its Tennessee EV battery facility in Spring Hill to produce lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells for ESS.
Ford Motor Company recently launched Ford Energy, its energy storage-focused subsidiary.
