We have been waiting for Panasonic to unveil another giga factory lithium ion destination in the US for the past 12 months, and its deal this week is to build a plant in De Soto, Kansas, which is likely to be the base for building Tesla 4680 batteries in the US. Six months ago it became clear that Panasonic would be the first company outside of Tesla to make the 4680, but much of the work would be based in Japan, where Panasonic has multiple factories in Wakayama, dedicated to different aspects of battery manufacture. In our research paper on emerging Li-ion giga-factories we expected a new factory to be announced this year to , begin manufacture by 2024, and…