Acciona is preparing a new strategic turn to participate in the enormous green investments that will be undertaken this decade in Europe and in other strategic markets. The European Commission calculates that an effort of one trillion euros will be necessary, and the Government manages a figure of 240,000 million for Spain. The claim is powerful for Acciona, which is preparing to take a leap in mobility next year to create a large multi-business group under the umbrella of sustainability.
The countdown has already begun and this time Barcelona will be the starting point. After construction and renewable energies, the objective now is to attack mobility, with which Acciona wants to close the circle in 2023 and launch into all kinds of opportunities related to decarbonization.
The company has detected that the large investments in construction are oriented towards sustainable infrastructures such as desalination plants, water management systems or waste treatment. This trend coincides with its track record of success in renewable energy, where it jumped ahead of other builders by launching its own business. The company capitalizes close to 10,000 million euros on the stock market and has achieved that its subsidiary Acciona Energía also has a presence on the Ibex and an even higher valuation, of 12,000 million.
In its traditional construction business, it has achieved a project portfolio of more than 20,000 million euros, which it wants to reinforce with the concessions area. In energy, it has 11,400 megawatts of renewables installed and expects new projects to be unlocked in Spain in 2023. He also has a real estate division with pre-sales for 614 million euros and an asset management division, Bestinver, which manages 5.2 billion euros.
This entire perimeter will be completed with mobility and under the slogan business as unusual. Despite inflation and rising costs, the group has the strength to focus on the new objective. This year it forecasts double-digit growth in gross operating profit (ebitda) and a rate of investment in the high range of expectations, between 1,700 and 1,900 million.
The star mobility project will be the launch next year of a small, low-cost, self-manufactured electric car. He aspires to sell it for less than 10,000 euros to turn it into a disruptive concept. The trick is in a system of interchangeable batteries at specific points.
The new car, barely 2.3 meters long, will be urban and can be purchased not only by individuals, but also for car sharing services. To do this, Acciona will rely on the experience of its shared electric motorcycle service, which already has 10,000 units deployed in Spanish cities such as Madrid and Barcelona, in addition to the Italian cities of Rome and Milan.
The point of support is the Silence company, acquired in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, when mobility hit the ground. This company was the first to sign contracts to occupy the land left by Nissan in the Barcelona Free Zone, where the cars will be manufactured.
Barcelona is also the laboratory for strategic alliances, among which the one with Cepsa stands out, in whose service stations the points for exchanging batteries will be installed. This deployment will allow Acciona to get ahead of infrastructure companies, build a car and break a taboo in the industry.
The president of the company, José Manuel Entrecanales, has placed mobility among the priorities and assures that the objective is to deploy his own system of urban and interurban cargo both in Europe and in Latin America. For this, a company called Cargacoches has been acquired, which will offer the batteries.
Entrecanales wants the new car "to be groundbreaking both for its removable and interchangeable battery and for its extremely competitive price." The idea was to launch it before the end of this year, but there was never a specific date due to problems with the supply of parts and logistics.
Acciona, which at the time became interested in competing in the liberalization of the high-speed train in Spain, aspires to "cover all the needs of urban electric mobility with the same interchangeable batteries in a trolley format". The concept is called Baas (Battery as a Service), and the time for the big deployment will be in the second half of 2023.
