Panasonic Energy has opened Energy Innovation Square, a lithium-ion battery research and development facility in Kadoma, Osaka, built to serve as a global hub covering material development, cell design and prototyping for the company's automotive and data-center battery lines.
Energy Innovation Square pairs with the existing Suminoe Production Development Facility in Osaka City to speed up development and mass production of next-generation cells. Panasonic Energy said the manufacturing processes the two sites work out together will extend to its plants elsewhere in Japan and to its US factories in Nevada and Kansas, tying the new Osaka hub into the company's existing production footprint rather than standing apart from it.
The numbers point to real scale. Energy Innovation Square will house about 500 people working on cell product planning, technology development and analysis. Combined with Suminoe's headcount, Panasonic Energy puts the two sites' workforce at roughly 800, calling it one of the largest dedicated battery-development operations in Japan. The company's stated target is to double development efficiency by fiscal 2031, the year ending March 2031, measured against fiscal 2024.
Panasonic Energy frames the investment against a demand shift it sees coming from two directions at once: EVs pushing for higher energy density and longer durability, and the buildout of AI data centers pushing for higher-output cells, with drones, robotaxis and humanoid robots named as further-out use cases the company is tracking. By consolidating development and prototyping steps that had been split across multiple sites, Panasonic Energy expects to cut development lead times tied to transportation by more than 15 percent, backed by a digital-transformation platform meant to tighten the loop between simulation data and physical testing.
Panasonic Energy CEO Kazuo Tadanobu called Energy Innovation Square "a core hub for Panasonic Energy's battery development," meant to strengthen the line from early-stage R&D through mass production. The building covers about 24,500 square meters across six floors above ground at 1048 Oaza Kadoma in Kadoma, Osaka, floor space Panasonic Energy says is dedicated entirely to lithium-ion cell technology work, spanning material development, prototyping and analysis for the cells that will eventually reach its US plants.
