The Valencian automotive industry, before the hope for the gigafactory and the electric vehicle

The Valencian automotive industry has been summoned this Tuesday in the second edition of Smart Mobility Valencia to share its technological advances in the field of sustainable automotive.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
14 September 2022 Wednesday 19:39
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The Valencian automotive industry, before the hope for the gigafactory and the electric vehicle

The Valencian automotive industry has been summoned this Tuesday in the second edition of Smart Mobility Valencia to share its technological advances in the field of sustainable automotive. The forum comes a month after the bad taste in the mouth left in the local industry by Ford withdrawing from the PERTE electric vehicle, but under the hope that the installation of the Seat-Volkswagen gigafactory in Sagunt entails.

On this issue, sources in the sector assured that both the company and the cluster still do not know what will happen to those projects that were left off the hook and trust that the intention announced by the Generalitat Valenciana to get the Government to create a specific program endowed with funds from a new phase of the Next Generation- EU so that these can be financed.

They also recognize that there is concern in the industry about the continuous modifications of Ford's ERTE due to the instability in the supply of semiconductors and components; well for the changes that have to come.

Likewise, the same sources add, European funds are not the only possible means of financing for these proposals, since there are others "equally attractive and that require less bureaucracy", they qualified.

Javier Alcalá, director of Mobility and Logistics of the Technological Institute of Packaging, Transport and Logistics (ITENE) and advisor to several of the companies that accompanied Ford in PERTE, also added that "some were already in other PERTEs, with which, even if they were not the same projects, that is going to help promote them,” he said.

The mobility expert believes that "there will be another call for PERTE to be able to allocate the 2,400 million euros that have not yet been allocated and I would like to think that Ford, by then, will have already ordered all its investments to be able to participate."

ITENE, which yesterday explained its developments on mobility in one of the forty stands that hosted the fair, also collaborates with the entrepreneurial world through the Mobility Hub Startup Valencia, integrated in Startup Valencia: Gaia Green Tech, Miivo Mobility, V2C, SpotiEnergy SLU and Flit2go participated in the meeting yesterday.

From that experience, and from his own, Alcalá added that the Valencian Community has “an entrepreneurial capital that is working hard on this type of different solutions. We are very well positioned, the Valencian industry has a lot to contribute both for the industrial part and for sustainable mobility, production of components or software”.

Getting as close as possible to this industry and making contact with it is the intention of the MAQcenter company, which acknowledged having come with hope for the business opportunities that the Sagunt gigafactory will open. The firm produces, among other things, supports for batteries, so it was interested in contacting suppliers that can open the door for the German multinational.

Sergio García and David Utrillas explained it, who assured that the sector has "a great workload", despite the economic perspectives that the current energy crisis could entail. "We already work with some companies and we were interested in being here because new opportunities are going to open up for suppliers," they explained.

From AVIA, its manager Elena Lluch confirmed yesterday that attendance had tripled forecasts and that this second edition of Smart Mobility Valencia at the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències -the first was at Feria Valencia- exceeds "all expectations".

Of the participating companies, 50 are from the Valencian Community and 46 foreign, from 18 countries, including Italy, Poland, France, Israel and Ukraine, with more than 70 meetings scheduled throughout the day.