Seat has reconfirmed its wish to keep producing cars in the electric age in its Martorell production facility by announcing a €300 million investment in a new battery plant. This will provide the battery packs for the VW Group’s compact electric models, which Seat will produce in Martorell.

Seat is committed to its Martorell production facility near Barcelona, which celebrated its 30th anniversary earlier this year. As a birthday present, Seat announced its decision to invest €3 billion to convert the factory to an EV production facility, which will build the VW Group’s new compact electric models (VW ID.2, Cupra Raval…).

Assembly of locally-sourced cells

CEO and president Wayne Griffiths has announced that a new €300 million battery plant will be added to the site, providing “400+ direct jobs and more than 100 indirect jobs” to the area. The battery cells will partly come from VW’s battery company PowerCo in Valencia and will subsequently be assembled in Martorell. The battery factory will cover an area of 64 000 square meters and finish construction in 2025.

Griffiths also mentioned the company’s desire to get the production allocation of a second EV platform in Martorell, in addition to the MEB Entry platform of the compact models mentioned earlier.

The CEO closed his statement by urging the Spanish and European governments to increase incentives to boost EV adoption and production in Europe, to “boost competitiveness” – in other words, to protect the European manufacturers from China.

With this Martorell battery plant, Seat has already applied to the second round of the EU’s PERTE VEC subsidy program, which supports battery production projects in Spain.