After announcing the activation of the Part of the electric and connected vehicle last Friday for an amount of 877.2 million euros, the Government has made public today the allocation of grants from the first call. The distribution has not met expectations, as expected, and the main tractor projects have fallen somewhat short of what the companies that submitted their proposals to the European funds intended.
The project that has received the greatest allocation has been the one presented by Seat, Volkswagen Group and 62 other companies, the Future Fast Forward, which will have a public investment of 397.377 million euros. This is clearly an insufficient amount to make room for projects that include the electrification of power plants Martorell and Landaben, as well as the construction of a battery plant in Sagunt. Still, those nearly 400 million far exceed the 167 million expected in the run-up to last August. Those responsible for the project have stated that “we are committed to the electrification of the Spanish automobile industry and we want to mobilize 10,000 million euros, the largest industrial investment in the country’s history”. Now they want to analyze the distribution: “We will study its effects on all the projects in order to find the right solutions to be able to execute the maximum possible volume of the planned investment projects”, they have indicated.
By amounts, the distribution has been completed with the project of Mercedes Benz for the comprehensive transformation of the electric mobility value chain for sustainability and competitiveness in the development and manufacturing in Victory of an electric minivan. The endowment of this initiative is €170.4 million6.9% of those initially distributed.
Vigo also receives
The project follows Hub-dCO2 of decarbonisation for the adaptive, modular and multi-reference manufacturing of electric cars in Barcelona will receive €107.8 million and the project Thesislead by Opel (Stellantis), will have aid for 52.2 million for the Zaragoza plant and its surroundings, which will allow the Stellantis group to become one of the largest industrial companies in Spain.
The initiative of Renault to create an industrial ecosystem of innovation will have €40.06 million. From the project they have been surprised because it is one of the few that has not received an increase in endowment since the publication of the previous one in August. The project led by SAPA will obtain 32.86 million. Faurecia will get 28.24 million, by 24.18 million Irizar. the plant of Stellantis in Vigo will finally be carried with the project Aries €15.1 millionY Fagor Electronics will have 8.78 million remaining. In total they are 10 tractor projects which add up €877.221 million30% of the European funds allocated to Spain (2,250 million euros) for the electric and connected vehicle plan.
Of the thirteen proposals presented at the beginning, only the consortiums of companies led by Rieju and by Global Gabes (linked to the Navalmoral de la Mata battery gigafactory in Extremadura), while Ford withdrew his candidacy, not without first looking at a new call for Perte in 2023more in line with your industrial needs for execution times.
The Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Kings Marotopointed out that “the 10 projects financed in this first call for the Perte VEC show the great potential that Spain has to lead electromobility in Europe and reinforce the Government’s commitment to supporting the transformation of the automobile industry towards more sustainable mobility. From the Ministry we are going to continue working to make more public resources available to the sector to accompany the important investments that our business ecosystem has to make to electrify its production chain and new global players that want to invest in our country”.
Sagunt’s mystery
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This amount falls short of the total investment of €10 billion that the German consortium wants to carry out in Spain. The critical point will be battery plant whose planned investment exceeded 3,000 million euros. The distribution of those almost 400 million for those three key points (Navarre, Martorell and Sagunt) is very, very far from what he had foreseen in his day Herbert Diess (president of the Volkswagen group) in his initial proposal. Of those 10,000 million, 7,000 would correspond to the consortium and the other 3,000 to the 62 companies in the project.
In the German consortium there has been a change of course since the photo in Sagunt with the goodbye to Diess and the arrival of Oliver Blumewith another more technical and realistic profile, which could ccondition the initial idea, in the absence of any other additional aid from the Government itself and the autonomous communities. From the consortium they have not commented on anything about it and, like the rest of the projects, they have 10 days to present allegations. From now on, the winning companies will have to present the required guarantees and the forecast is that they will begin to receive the money before the end of the year. In general, 90% of the total amount will be advanced of the aid granted to each beneficiary. Once the first call for this line of support for the industrial value chain has ended, continuity will be given through a new call, in the first quarter of 2023.