Volkswagen announces the opening of a new battery factory in Spain

The Group Volkswagen, one of the world’s leading car manufacturers, has announced the opening of a factory dedicated to producing batteries for electric cars in our country, taking advantage of the investment by the Spanish Government of €4,295 million aimed at boosting the automotive sector.

In this way, the group headquartered in Wolfsburg will submit its bid for the Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE), a project whose investment, according to the government, is expected to generate a private return on investment of €19,700 million and more than 140,000 jobs.

No further details have yet been confirmed about the location of the factory, although the two most viable options would be Martorell (Barcelona), where the plant of Seat and Cupra is located, or Landaben (Navarre), where the plant of Volkswagen is located.

One of the six chosen

If it ultimately goes ahead, since Volkswagen has made it very clear that this factory will only be built if the public investment is approved, Spain would become the third country chosen by the group, behind Sweden and Germany, to host one of the six gigafactories that the automotive giant plans to open across Europe.

The requirements that the PERTE demands in order to be eligible for this bid are that it must include at least five companies from two autonomous communities, that 40% of the business weight be carried by SMEs, that it must involve at least one entity focused on research, and finally, that a battery factory be built. These requirements do not pose any problem for the Group.

Strategic pillar of the Volkswagen Group

With this plan, it is expected that in 2023, the year in which the PERTE’s implementation period concludes, 250,000 electric vehicles will be registered, and as the Group’s chairman Herbert Diess said, “Spain could become a strategic pillar of our electric strategy,” since the manufacturer is willing to create an electric mobility value chain covering everything from the production of electric vehicles to their components and batteries.

Of the €4,295 million that make up the total investment of the PERTE, more than €3,000 million will be allocated to enabling factories in our country to produce electric vehicles. The remaining €1,200 million form part of the Moves III Plan and the Moves Singular Projects Plan to incentivise the purchase of environmentally friendly vehicles.