Panasonic pushes up Gigafactory timetable

• Panasonic (OTCPK:PCRFY, OTCPK:PCRFF) will begin to produce batteries for Tesla (TSLA +2.6%) at the Gigafactory ahead of schedule, according to a report from the Nikkei Asian Review.
• Nikkei reports that the Nevada plant is set to open in July, with power cell production to begin in November. That's a quicker timetable than the early 2017 ramp up in battery production that some anticipated.
• A Panasonic executive is quoted as saying that the company is likely to invest more than $1.6B in the plant in order to speed up production and avoid delaying the Tesla assembly line.