Wayne Griffiths, CEO of SEAT and CUPRA

F3 – Ambitious Industrial Investment   

“Future: Fast Forward”; that’s what f3 stands for and is an aggressive and ambitious industrial investment that Spain as a country has ever seen in recent times. Mobilizing 10 billion euros, this initiative will aid a major reboot to the entire car industry in Spain, from building combustion cars to one that’ll see heavy influx of electric cars by 2025. With a battery plant in Valencia that’ll serve the battery needs for all these electric cars, Spain is well positioned to be self sufficient as far as the supply chain needs – lessons well learned from recent years with the pandemic taking a toll on production and roll out.

“These small electric cars, they provide an answer to the whole question of accessibility to electro mobility. You know electric cars have come into the market from the top down- from the print manufacturers, electro manufacturers and with our small battery electric vehicle platform, we want to democratize electric mobility for the masses.”

Aside from this handy vertical integration owning their own batteries versus importing them, from say China, Wayne is quick to point out the fact that “the untapped potential of renewable energy, everyday, in Spain is what makes this whole equation work.”

Keeping Design Aesthetic and Urban

Don’t be boring. Taking an approach that’s lively and keeping design aspects “enthusiastic” has been a differentiating aspect to the CUPRA team. Wayne acknowledges their key success element lies in their design, drawing inspiration from an urban Barcelona landscape versus housing a design team somewhere far away in their factory setting. “How we want to design is, we want to be provocative, we want to do cars that not perhaps everybody like, but some people love.” Believing in the idea that in order to stand out, you have to take risks and not just work simply towards pleasing everybody, the CUPRA design team has established their class of designing and succeeding in a very sporty line of models.

“Our class is that we design a very very sporty, I mean unique, iconic line of vehicles – from the CUPRA Formentor to CUPRA Urban Rebel. So that’s one part of the emotional story. We believe even in an electric era that cars don’t have to be rational and boring, but can be emotional. And the second element then that we bring in, is the driving and the driving experience. We make cars to be driven by the driver. We don’t make cars that are democratic to everybody sitting in the car. So we don’t do screens for everybody in the car, we do everything around the driver for him to drive, and for him to enjoy and for him to be connected with the street, and having an emotional experience.”

No wonder this philosophy has led to a brand that now can boast of a CUPRA Tribe – with people right from the ones that created this brand and are defending this brand, to the ones they associate themselves with: folks from the sporting world, the acting community, & other people – who are all sharing values together and enjoying their journey and the rising popularity of these electric vehicle models.

Democratizing Electro Mobility  

The CUPRA UrbanRebel is considered a “game changer” by Wayne, given that it will help democratize electro mobility for a lot more people, with a modest and entry level price range. With the Future: Fast Forward project, CUPRA has created a group of 62 national and international partners to transform Spain into a European hub for electric mobility. Risks aren’t few given the “business vertigo”, but the only way out is to accelerate when the business climate isn’t very comfortable. That’s what has led the company’s design to where it is, and the infrastructure support they get from the Volkswagen group, given they are a contemporary value add on now to the bigger entity.

“The fear of so much change in such a changing environment is that as long as you’re doing your best, then you know, you can’t do any more. And by not doing that, then you would fail anyway.

The pandemic, semi conductor shortage, Russian war in Ukraine, energy crisis causing inflation- is making things a lot more difficult. I see them as accelerators. Without these crises, we wouldn’t be making the big, ambitious steps we’re already making today in these decisions. I think we have, like making your own battery , everything’s going well, you go slow; when things go really bad, then you have to go really fast. And you start accelerating a lot of things that you would have done a lot later; you have to do them tomorrow.”

With the Volkswagen and Audi dealer networks across the world, CUPRA’s go to market, is use that solid base and physical coverage across the country to provide service. For a generation of folks who only want to buy mobility and use mobility, offering captivating design ideas and innovation of urban types of vehicles will be a pivotal aspect for such companies like CUPRA which aims to go fully electric by 2030. As far as globalization, the launch in the Australian market is a strategic move for the brand’s expansion in Asia Pacific and beyond.

A leader who was quite comfortable at AUDI AG, gave himself a role to play in revamping the SEAT company’s offering by creating the sporty electric line of CUPRA cars; Wayne’s journey is not just a personal reboot story for one to emulate, but a story that has helped build a phenomenal future for his company in an EV era.