Spain To Kick Start EV Production by investing 4.3 Billion Euros
Spain is going to invest 4.3 billion euros to start off the production of electric vehicles & batteries as part of a major national spending programme financed mostly by European Union recovery funds. Pedro Sanchez the prime minister said in his presentation, the investment would fund and would include the whole production chain from extracting lithium to assembling battery cells and manufacturing electric vehicles.
Spain wants to be presumptive knowing the Electric Vehicle movement is getting strong traction in the European Union. After Germany, Spain is Europes largest auto manufacturer, and they want to stay ahead, with the production of EVs becoming the new main type of manufactured cars, so Spain, Germany and France are all making large efforts to retool and rework their manufacturing plants.
Sanches predicts that the economic output from the sector will increase by 5%, up to 15% from the 10% it’s currently at. The funds also include a 1 billion euros to help speed up the manufacturing and placement of charging units for EVs. The total funds are estimated at around 750 billion euros from the EU, of which Spain will get a 70 billion cut of the funds.
Spains involvement goes much deeper than just manufacturing the electric vehicles though, eventually Spain want to get into every single aspect of the electric vehicle production, ranging from mining for the battery materials all the way up to using the SEAT manufacturing facilities to finalise production.
Image Source Automotive Logistics
Spain still has a ways to go, but with the extra funding and extremely highly motivated political parties overseeing the shift from traditional to electric will be a sudden one, over the next five or so years. Seat is a behemoth in Spain and is responsible for a very large share of the cars available in Spain, after being bought by the Volkswagen Group and being caught in the crossfire of the VW emissions scandal, where over 700,000 Seat cars were fitted with the rigged VW engines, Seat must be eager to step into this new generation of auto manufacturing with a far greener outlook.
As we discussed previously about manufactures like Porsche going fully green, it has opened the door for many other manufacturers to take similar steps. Spain is keeping in line with many other European countries where eco friendliness and environmental awareness are very popular topics of conversation. Be it genuine interest, fear of backlash or simply a big pr stunt the seat plants making electric vehicles is a step that mostly everyone can benefit from. With the aid from the government injecting large capital into the process makes the entire process a “no brainer” for Seat. Will we see other companies around the globe receive government funding to help their car plants produce more E.V.’s and keep in line with a more environmentally conscious manufacturing process?
Spain has extra pressure in the EU as it holds such a large portion of the European car manufacturing market and with that in mind it must always look to the future to maintain it’s strong position in the car making world. With rival counties and car brands constantly eating into market share, making the move to be one of the forerunning countries to really push on the EV movement they believe they can advance their position. Spain is so set on their environmentally conscious car process that new laws have been approved surrounding the types of cars and engines allowed to travel in certain areas. The simple version of these laws are that cars are awarded a sticker based on their eco-friendliness and their emissions. The better the car performs the more freely it may travel where the badly rated cars will be exiles from high population cities. They hope that this will help reduce pollution in heavily populated areas as well as encourage large groups of people to stop using cars or to buy more environmentally conscious cars.
