In order to meet strong demand for the electric car maker’s upcoming Model 3 sedan, Panasonic Corp is prepared to move up its investment plans for Tesla Motors Inc’s battery plant, an executive at the Japanese electronics group.

“We will do our best to move up the schedule if requested,” Yoshio Ito, head of Panasonic’s automotive and industrial systems (AIS) division, told reporters at a briefing on Friday.

Over the next few years $1.6 billion of the $5 billion for Tesla’s “Gigafactory” is being planned by Panasonic as contribution in phases.  Advanced car battery production is scheduled to start later this year.

Setting a target of two years ahead of time period planned earlier, Tesla has said it would respond to brisk demand for the Model 3 by tooling up its factories to build 500,000 vehicles a year in 2018 and hence a faster ramp-up of the battery plant would be crucial.

Supplier executives and industry consultants have told Reuters it would be difficult to achieve and potentially costly, the target that has been set by Tesla and the proposed acceleration in the plans to move up the launch of high-volume production of the Model 3 to 2018.

“We just don’t want to be a bottleneck,” Ito said at the briefing while he declined to comment on whether Tesla’s target is achievable.

Panasonic “hopes to play a balancing act” of ensuring investment returns and filling responsibilities as a supplier, Ito said when asked about the risks of being heavily involved in Tesla’s aggressive production plans.

Of late, there has been a strategy shift by Panasonic which now intends to withdraw from low-margin consumer electronics products like smartphones to focus more on automotive components and other businesses targeting corporate clients and the partnership with Tesla is part of the Japanese company’s effort to realize that strategy.

Aimed at representing roughly 20 percent of overall sales over the next three years, Panasonic is aiming to nearly double its automotive business revenue to 2 trillion yen ($18.2 billion).

The Japanese company bought 49 percent of Spanish auto-parts maker Ficosa International SA last year to expand its presence in the auto industry.

For the purchase of companies with technologies that it does not possess in the automotive field, Panasonic could spend 300 billion yen to 400 billion yen, Ito said.

“There are some possible deals on the table,” he said.

Meanwhile, according to IFR, $1.46 billion in fresh capital has been raised by Tesla Motors from the sale of its 6.8 million new common stock offering.

This money would be used for Tesla’s plans to expand production of its electric vehicles to 500,000 a year by 2018.

Lead managers Morgan Stanley,Goldman Sachs Group, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and Bank of America Merrill Lynch priced the shares at $215.

Compared to its previous sale price of $242 in August 2015 and a year high of $286.65 hit in July 2015, the pricing of the latest shares is lower.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk would sell 2.8 million of his own shares, mainly to pay taxes related to exercising vested stock options, the company had said and had added that it planned to sell up to $1.7 billion in new shares to fund its operations.

(Adapted from Reuters & CNBC)