SEAT to open an innovation lab in Barcelona
Metropolis:Lab Barcelona will be the sixth such centre belonging to the Volkswagen Group and will employ 50 highly qualified professionals
SEAT is to strengthen its ties with Barcelona. In the next few months, in early 2017, the company will open and run the sixth innovation laboratory belonging to the Volkswagen Group, which will focus on finding solutions related to intelligent mobility and combining vehicle data with its environment in order to develop applications which are expected to be used by all of the brands owned by the German consortium.
An agreement was reached this Wednesday morning between the President of SEAT, Luca de Meo, and the Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, together with the Deputy Mayor for Enterprise, Innovation and Culture, Jaume Collboni, and SEAT’s Vice President for Institutional Relations, Ramon Paredes.
The centre will be called Metropolis:Lab Barcelona and is to begin operating early next year with twenty employees. As the project develops, this number will subsequently grow to a total of 50 employees, with the workforce mainly consisting of engineers and highly skilled professionals, according to De Meo.
The Volkswagen Group already has four laboratories of this type in Germany: two in Wolfsburg, home to the group's headquarters, one in Munich and a fourth in Berlin. It also operates a fifth centre in San Francisco, United States.
SEAT's president explained that they had looked for "alternative locations" and stated that the sixth centre will be located where it will be able to connect to the city’s innovation ecosystem. Nevertheless, De Meo refused to specify the exact sum involved, stating that it was "somewhat premature", though he ventured that the operating costs would largely involve salaries and the upkeep of the facilities.
Towards a more sustainable mobility model
The work of the Metropolis:Lab Barcelona will focus on the intelligent management of traffic and various applications related to the connected car. The president of SEAT announced that his company "Shares a commitment with the city council to achieve a more sustainable, smarter and safer form of mobility in which we move towards the goal of zero emissions and zero accidents".
De Meo noted that the company "is investing in a more connected and efficient range", and gave the example of vehicles powered by natural gas. He also added that SEAT plans to launch its first electric car in 2019.
Speaking on behalf of the city, Mayor Colau remarked that the creation of the centre and the collaboration between SEAT and the council will contribute to a paradigm shift in mobility in metropolitan areas: "Barcelona has been Spain’s automobile capital and we now wish to lead this paradigm shift, and do so in a partnership with the sector itself". Meanwhile, Collboni said that major transformation projects "have always been carried out in collaboration with the private sector," and thanked Luca de Meo for believing in Barcelona and for wishing to link SEAT’s innovative aspects with the city.
