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VW Wants to Build a Battery Plant in Spain near Valencia!
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Volkswagen AG said that it will spend more than 7 billion euros ($7.7 billion) in Spain to develop an electric-car supply chain, including a battery facility and a variety of suppliers.
According to the company, which owns the Seat brand, it aims to establish an e-mobility center in Spain, led by a battery plant in Valencia, and modify its local carmaking facilities in Martorell and Pamplona to begin producing electric cars. The battery facility will have a 40-gigawatt-hour capacity and begin production in 2026.
Volkswagen, which had stated previously that it was ready to list its battery business, aims to invest roughly 52 billion euros in the development and manufacturing of new electric vehicles within the next five years, the industry’s largest push. Valencia will be Volkswagen’s first battery facility outside of Germany, and its second overall, as part of a European-wide ambition to build six factories.
Valencia’s battery plant will employ 3,000 people, and VW aims to retrain some of the city’s carmakers because electric vehicles take less time to put together.
The VW Polo, T-Cross, and Tiago models are presently produced in the company’s Pamplona plant, which employs 4,600 workers and produced over 220,000 vehicles last year. With a staff of 11,000 employees, Martorell, 30 kilometers (19 miles) outside of Barcelona, produces roughly 500,000 Seat-branded automobiles each year.
VW also revealed earlier this week that it had struck agreements with two Chinese businesses to develop joint ventures for the production and refinement of nickel and cobalt, two important raw materials used in battery manufacturing.
To be competitive in the new electric world, we now have to raise productivity in our Spanish car production.
statement by Thomas Schmall, VW’s Head of Development and Leader of the Seat Brand.
