Head of Spanish Automakers’ Group Has Green Agenda

MADRID – A leader of Spain’s auto industry asks the government for greater cooperation in helping it protect the environment and develop sustainable mobility through new technologies backed by subsidies.

“Our sector is facing an unprecedented technological challenge: digitization, connectivity, electrification, autonomous driving...and all this with a greater environmental requirement,”

José Vicente de los Mozos, a vice president of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, says in his first public remarks since beginning a two-year term as executive president of ANFAC, the main Spanish association of automakers.

“In this sense, modern vehicles, with the latest technology of low and zero emissions, and of course, alternative vehicles, are part of the solution to air-quality problems that may arise in large cities,” de los Mozos says.

“Therefore, in ANFAC we believe that a structural and unique subsidies program funded with €150 million ($185.6 million) per year is necessary to increase the share of these new technologies in the market,” he says, noting vehicles in Spain are 12 years old on average.

ANFAC is asking that environmental and mobility policies be made as uniform as possible throughout the country.

For example, de los Mozos suggests environmental labeling by the DGT, the government agency that regulates vehicles and road traffic, should be used as a common reference in the design of sustainable-mobility policies.

De los Mozos believes a new tax system is needed – a “green tax” focused more on the use of the car than on its purchase and benefiting Spain’s largest cities. The European Commission already has asked Spain to increase revenues from environmental taxes, he notes.

The government should encourage the installation of public and private charging points for electric, natural-gas and fuel-cell vehicles, and create dedicated traffic lanes for buses and high-occupancy, low-emissions or emissions-free vehicles.

“We believe that, with the support of the Spanish government, the market share of alternative vehicles could be multiplied by four,” says de los Mozos, who heads the alliance’s assembly operations in Europe, Russia, Iran, Latin America and Africa.

The government also could make the industry more competitive by acting on several fronts including logistics, the executive says.

“Increasing trucks’ capacity, reducing prices paid (for) automobiles in maritime transport, improving the connection of ports by rail or the standardization of trains of 750 meters (825 yards) in length, would reduce the costs of our industry by around €100 million ($123.7 million) per