>If it's mostly the latter, what would stop Panasonic from providing the same technology to other parties?

There's a big benefit for Panasonic supplying a company with hot products, like Tesla. But outside of whatever contractual obligations they have, there's nothing stopping them.

I implore you to look around at these industries from other sources. If you only read HackerNews, you'd think Tesla is the only company that can make a decent EV (even though motortrend said the Bolt performed nearly as well, had longer range and was $30k cheaper than the Model 60), that no one is close with self-driving and that Tesla are the only one providing this type of solar panel or battery storage solution. These are all hyper competitive, low margin spaces.

Tesla is doing some very cool things, but the unjustified hype is going to blow up in people's faces. Expectations are too high.