Seat wants to open a battery factory in Spain. To this end, the Volkswagen Group and Seat will work together with the Spanish government. How big the factory will be and where it will be placed is not yet known.
Incidentally, the Volkswagen Group and Seat do not intend to only tackle this project together with the Spanish government. Energy company Iberdrola, among others, is involved in the initiative for the battery factory. Ultimately, the aim is to make the ‘industrial infrastructure’ suitable for electromobility, with which Spain must be pulled out of the doldrums from an economic point of view. The plan is to build ‘small EVs’ at the Seat factory in Martorell and to arrange battery production for that car at a local level as well. Whether this is the already announced Cupra Born or a new EV from Seat, is not entirely clear.
Seat itself is investing € 5 billion in electromobility until 2025. It is not known how much money the European Union is still pumping into the battery factory, but according to Reuters this is a ‘significant part’ of the € 140 billion that Spain will receive from the EU to overcome the consequences of the pandemic. The EU is currently promoting the construction of battery factories in Europe in order to strengthen the competitive position, mainly vis-à -vis Asia. It was previously announced that Nissan will divest its factory in Barcelona, ​​after which the South Korean LG would have shown interest in the location to produce batteries there. However, it is quite possible that Seat will now take over the factory to produce batteries there itself.