Is Japan unable to produce batteries for electric vehicles? No, that's not true: Japanese company Panasonic produces EV batteries and is ranked as a major player in the EV batteries global market.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) posted on November 9, 2022. The person making the claim is Sohei Kamiya, a member of the House of Councillors - the upper house of the National Diet - of the right-wing Sanseito political party in Japan.
At the 00:39 mark in the video, this is what he says:
Batteries for electric vehicles cannot be made in Japan. China bought all the Japanese companies. If electric cars become mainstream, Japan will not be able to make cars alone.
(Translated from Japanese into English by Lead Stories staff).
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri May 12 12:58:53 2023 UTC)
Even though Chinese companies saw a big growth in the power battery market, Panasonic, a Japanese company, is still strong: it was ranked fourth in 2022 in global share of EV batteries, as market data firm SNE Research reports.
Panasonic is currently expanding abroad: according to a press release from April, 18, 2023, Panasonic, which already supplies Tesla with EV batteries, has signed a contract to supply automotive batteries for commercial vehicles to Hexagon Purus in North America.
