There will be no electric cars from the Spanish VW brand Seat. At least not for 2030, says the CEO.
Seat will not have an electric car in its 2030 model range. This is confirmed by CEO Wayne Griffiths.
The Volkswagen-owned brand will make a decision on a timeline for electric cars "by the end of the decade," Griffiths said in an interview with Autocar .
At Seat and Cupra's annual conference, where record-breaking annual financial results were also published, Griffiths acknowledged that Seat "will need an electric car to continue to exist."
– For Seat to have a certain future, we must also participate in the electric sector (electric cars, ed.), the director said.
When asked why Seat would wait until the 2030s when others are launching more electric cars already, Griffiths evasively replied that "Seat is a good business."
Cupra Born was supposed to be a Seat – it didn't turn out that way!
Last year, the brand sold 310,000 cars. That's 7.5 percent more cars than in 2023. This resulted in revenue of 4.8 million euros.
Combined with a lack of capacity at the factory in Martorell, Spain, where the upcoming Cupra Raval and Volkswagen ID.2 are already taking up employees' time, "an electric car is not a priority at the moment," the boss says.
The plan was for Seat to launch an electric car based on the Volkswagen ID.3 in 2021. But at the last moment it was renamed the Cupra Born.
Griffiths also pointed to the sister brand as a reason why Seat is keeping electric cars out of the program at this time.
Cupra, whose model range includes the Born and Tavascan electric cars, sold 248,100 cars in 2024.
Griffiths also explained that there are no plans to make a Seat out of the upcoming Volkswagen ID.1, a car that will probably cost 150,000 kroner in Denmark.
This is consistent with the statement from Volkswagen's technical director Kai Grünitz, who said that the ID.1 was developed exclusively for the German brand. This means that there will be no new UP! triplets.
He added, however, that he "wouldn't rule out" the prospect of an ID.1 twin in the future for Seat. Volkswagen would like that, though. Read more about it here .
The director has previously told Autocar that while the Seat group is focusing on Cupra in the near future because there is more money in it, Seat will get attention once the cheaper cars are in place.
