July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Sanyo Electric Co., the world’s largest maker of rechargeable batteries, aims to quadruple sales to automakers by 2015 as people buy more gasoline-electric cars.

Sales of car batteries will likely exceed 100 billion yen ($1 billion) by 2015, Mitsuru Honma, head of the rechargeable- battery unit, said in an interview July 3 at Sanyo’s head office in Osaka, western Japan. The company declined to give a precise figure for the current level.

Sanyo may reverse its forecast for a decline in total sales at the unit this year to an increase as demand rises more than expected for models used in cars and portable computers, Honma said. Ford Motor Co. of the U.S. and Honda Motor Co. of Japan are boosting orders “rapidly” for Sanyo’s nickel-hydride batteries for hybrid gasoline-electric cars, and the company is preparing to boost production, he said.

“Our car-battery business is still small, but it will likely expand along with the growth in the hybrid-car market,” Honma said.

Sanyo fell 4.9 percent today to close at 231 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, bringing its gain this year to 36 percent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell 1.4 percent today. Sanyo, which has been unprofitable in four of the past five years and is the target of a takeover bid by Panasonic Corp., forecast May 14 it will break even this year.

The projection was based on the expectation that sales of rechargeable batteries would decline 5.2 percent to 325.1 billion yen this fiscal year. The business unit that lodges the battery operation contributed 90 percent of Sanyo’s operating profit last year.

Batteries for Hybrids

The company will start supplying nickel-hydride cells to two European carmakers after 2010, Honma said without giving their names. It will boost monthly production capacity of the cells to 3.5 million or more from 2 million, he said.

Ford said July 1 that sales of hybrids totaled 3,649 in June, a record for the month and 91 percent more than a year earlier. Toyota Motor Co. said on June 25 it has booked 200,000 domestic orders for the third-generation Prius hybrid, introduced in May. It was Japan’s best-selling standard car that month, surpassing Honda’s Insight. Sanyo makes batteries for the Insight.

Sanyo is also winning contracts to supply lithium-ion batteries for hybrid vehicles, Honma said. Sanyo plans to build a plant in Kasai, Hyogo prefecture, western Japan, its second one for that market after a plant in Tokushima prefecture. The Kasai factory will produce 1 million cells monthly from July 2010, while the Tokushima factory makes lithium-ion batteries exclusively for Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest automaker.

Current hybrid cars use nickel-hydride batteries and automakers are shifting to develop models that use lighter and more powerful lithium-ion cells. Lithium-ion batteries cost more than nickel hydride models.

Sanyo is considering investments at its two plants in Japan making lithium-ion batteries for notebook computers, Honma said. That market will probably expand by 20 percent to 25 percent in terms of units this year, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mariko Yasu in Tokyo at myasu@bloomberg.net; Maki Shiraki in Tokyo at mshiraki1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 6, 2009 02:44 EDT