Panasonic

Panasonic self-driving car technology: Ficosa investment

Panasonic restructures away from TVs and other commodities to automotive parts

by Gerhard Fasol

Panasonic self-driving car technology

As part of the restructuring efforts, Panasonic invests in Spanish car parts maker Ficosa in order to jointly develop Panasonic self-driving car technology.

We have documented in our blogs and reports on Japan’s electronics industry how Japan’s electronics giants lost their global dominating advantages as TVs and other electronics products became commodities, and Japanese electronics makers were blind sided by Apple, Samsung and many other faster innovators. Japanese electronics companies including Panasonic were slow to recognize that their market leading positions were rapidly melting away, and were slow to change.

As part of the restructuring efforts, Panasonic sold several semiconductor fabs to Tower-Jazz, and in a move into car parts, Panasonic invests about US$ 275 million to acquire an approximately 50% stake in the Barcelona based Spanish car parts maker Ficosa International, in order to jointly develop self-driving car technology.

Ficosa had acquired the Sony Barcelona Technology Center

Interestingly, Ficosa had previously in 2010 acquired “SONY Barcelona Tec” SONY Barcelona Technology Center located at Viladecavalls near Barcelona partly alone, and partly in a joint-venture with the infrastructure company Comsa Emte SL.

Japan electronics industries – mono zukuri.

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