With four models on the market and another three in the portfolio, Cupra will already exceed Seat’s turnover in 2003, which has been excluded from the Volkswagen group’s electrification process. The question now is when the last Seat will come off the production lines.
Wayne Griffiths, CEO of Seat and Cupra, does not set deadlines, maintains that they are complementary brands and affirms that in any case the Spanish Society of Tourism Cars (the acronym for Seat) will continue to exist. This was explained on Tuesday night after presenting the three new Cupra models (The Terramar, the Tavascan and the UrbanRebel) that will be launched on the market until 2025. And with them, possibly already in 2026, Cupra will reach 500,000 cars sold, a level that Seat has reached very few times (the last in the record year of 2019 with 574,000). Last year Cupra contributed 17% of the group’s sales, but with exponential growth that it plans to maintain in the medium term.
The 500,000 vehicles is an almost mythical figure in the company, it is equivalent to the full capacity of the Martorell plant and for years it has been taken as a reference to measure whether the business is going well or not. Griffiths has been the driving force behind Cupra’s spectacular rise, which began just four years ago. His turnover has gone from 430 million in 2018 to almost 2,200 in 2021, a figure that is expected to double this year, according to Griffiths. “And it will contribute approximately half of the operating profit”, pointed out the CEO.
The plans that are being handled now is that also on the horizon of 2025 or 2026, Cupra’s turnover will exceed 15,000 million euros. A contrast to the little more than 9,000 million that Seat and Cupra added in 2021.
Cupra has a clear roadmap to continue growing with its new products. In its portfolio, the urban electric future of the Volkswagen group stands out, which will be manufactured in Martorell, will be sold under the Cupra, VW and Skoda brands at a price of around 20,000 euros and will receive aid from the Perte (strategic plan for the recovery and economic transition). Seat has been left out of the electrical project and has no range renewal plans. The Arona and the Ibiza could stop being manufactured as early as 2026. And the one that has a priori more life ahead of it is the León, until 2028 or 2029. And in any case, in Europe they should stop selling combustion cars in the 2035, as approved yesterday by the European Parliament.
“I’m going to fight for a second manufacturing platform,” Griffiths promised. It is something that the president of the works council, Matías Carnero, has been warning about for months. Because the problem with the electric vehicle is that it requires less staff. For now, Seat is going to cut 2,300 jobs in a non-traumatic way, especially retirements.
