Volkswagen’s Spanish subsidiary Seat plans to invest five billion euros in research and in the development of new models and plants by 2025. All-electric vehicles are to be produced at the main Catalan site in Martorell as soon as the market for electric cars has grown, the new CEO Carsten Isensee, who has been in office since the beginning of the year, said in Barcelona on Wednesday.
According to Seat, the money will primarily be used to finance new projects for the electrification of the fleet. In addition, the plants in Martorell and Barcelona will get new production facilities. Seat wants to drive the transformation of the auto industry in Spain, Isensee explained: "The future requires more digitization, more automation, more use of renewable energies."
"Huge opportunity"
Wayne Griffiths, executive vice president of sales and marketing, said the industry’s current shift is for new brands such as the 2018-launched Cupra "a huge opportunity". Seat could achieve sales of one billion euros with this, "as soon as the entire product range is available on the market".
Production of the Cupra Formentor will start in the second half of the year. The Cupra el-Born is scheduled to follow in 2021. This, the brand’s first all-electric model, is to be built at the VW plant in Zwickau, where the Volkswagen ID.3 – the slightly delayed, most important VW project in 2020. The car is expected to launch a new range of e-vehicles. Total investment in the group will be 33 billion euros by 2024, of which one-third will be for cars from VW’s main brand.