Assembly hall for the Volkswagen Touareg and Škoda Superb body shop in Bratislava in March 2024. (source: TASR - Pavel Neubauer)
Bratislava’s Volkswagen was in the running to build the new ID.1 electric vehicle, but Volkswagen’s entry-level electric car will be produced in Portugal instead. The group’s decision is being ascribed to the decreasing competitiveness of Slovakia, as well as the synergic effects that the global car manufacturer is pursuing.
“In the case of Volkswagen, it is a painful but important warning that action is necessary,” Martin Lidaj, executive director of the Business Alliance of Slovakia (PAS), an industry lobby group, told The Slovak Spectator. “If Slovakia does not restore its competitiveness, it may lose further investments – and not only in the automotive sector.”
He sees the decision as a bad signal for Slovakia’s economy – which relies on the automotive sector as one of its main pillars – that cannot be ignored.
“Losing a new project, especially in the field of electromobility, indicates that Slovakia is no longer an automatic choice, even for established investors,” said Lidaj.
Patrik Križanský, director of the Slovak Electric Vehicle Association (SEVA), ascribes the decision in part to the effects of the government’s public-finance consolidation package, which was announced last year and has mostly come into action this year.
“It is important to realise that the loss of the potential production of the ID.1 model is the first major example of the impact of the consolidation package,” Križanský told The Slovak Spectator.
