The commissioner for the Electric Vehicle Perte (VEC), José María López, announced this Wednesday at the eMobility Expo in Valencia that the second part of this Perte will be allocated, initially, to a new specific line of aid for battery manufacturers marked from Europe. “It has some very important incentives and the funds that we will put will depend on the suggestions from companies that are interested and whose names I still cannot reveal,” López explained, after his intervention at the congress.
The call will take place in June and will be simple, since the first to arrive will be evaluated and the money will be released. The amount of aid for this line has not been estimated, but it will not exceed the remaining 2,100 million euros of the 4,295 million euros assigned to this Project.
Interest in the battery business is also growing. And it is that the commissioner of Perte-VEC has also explained that “we have several contacts from battery manufacturers who want to come to Spain”.
Without detailing the origin of the investors, José María López has confirmed that they will occupy other regions of Spain that do not necessarily have to be the Valencian Community. “There is interest in diversifying in the territory and that Spain enriches itself,” he added.
On the other hand, López has also ensured that the conditions of this second call for the Perte will be “more flexible”, as the sector had demanded. “The conditions were very tough and that’s why we tried to get the second one with many improvements and other deadlines”, he pointed out.
López, who arrived at the Ministry at the beginning of the year after the changes in Industry, has said that the first thing he did when he arrived was to sit down with the Spanish Association of Automobile and Truck Manufacturers (Anfac) and the Spanish Association of Automotive Suppliers ( Sernauto), who asked for more flexibility.
Now, it has announced that there will be a reduction in guarantees for SMEs of up to 40%, also in eligible costs and consumables, etc., improvements that will add to the “freer” profile of this second call, in which it will not be necessary that the companies attend grouped and in this case, leading companies such as Ford will be able to attend alone or “with trusted SMEs”, because they do not want consortiums of 60 companies. Possibly the Ministry of Industry will put a stop to the number of companies that attend.
As confirmed, in June there will be a call for this line of batteries and in September the other call will arrive, for the rest of the electric vehicle sector that are not batteries.
Last week the Council of Ministers reported on the status of the Perte-VEC and so far calls for a value of 2,069 million euros have been authorized, which represents 50% of the funds provided. Regarding the funds of the resolved calls, the Executive confirmed that a total of 1,304 million euros are already available to end users.
