2020 will forever remain in everyone’s memory. It’s the year of COVID-19, of confinement and social distancing, but also of the effort, perseverance and commitment of all those who, in spite of everything, have given the best of themselves. This is the case of the more than 15,000 SEAT employees and all the people collaborating with the company who, at the most complicated moment, when everything came to a standstill, mobilised to keep others moving. These are the days of an unprecedented year for SEAT.
6 am: Great challenges ahead.
A year that will go down in history, where 15,000 SEAT employees gave their best.
Juan Antonio Sánchez begins his shift at workshop 10 at SEAT Martorell. He’s a supervisor on the line of the new Leon e-HYBRID. “With the pandemic, of course I had many doubts, but today I’m here, participating in the production of our first plug-in hybrid” he says. In July, SEAT announced a 5 billion euro investment plan until 2025 for R&D projects, especially for the electrification of the ranges and the Martorell, Barcelona and Componentes facilities.
8 am: All for one.
The CARS medical team continues performing PCR tests. SEAT was the first company in Spain to carry out these tests on all its employees. “There is no team in the world that is big enough to deal with the pandemic, but we managed to contain it thanks to the preventive tests we carried out on a massive scale on each worker on at least two occasions” assures Dr. Patricia Such, SEAT’s Health, Safety and Emergencies Director.
9 am: Solidarity.
José Manuel González supervises the sub-frame line of the new Leon, the same line where production of emergency ventilators began in April, just two weeks after the state of alarm was declared, and after intense work against the clock. “We applied ingenious solutions, such as using windscreen wiper motors, to respond quickly to society” recalls José Manuel. 600 emergency ventilators produced at SEAT were distributed to hospitals throughout Spain.
11 am: Global ambition.
The CUPRA Formentor is presented to the press in Munich, Germany, an example of CUPRA’s global rollout, which in September also inaugurated its first CUPRA Garage in Europe in Hamburg. “In an unprecedented year, we’ve worked very hard to maintain our commitments, such as the arrival of the first 100% CUPRA model, the Formentor, designed, developed and produced here, and the inauguration of our headquarters in Martorell” says Antonino Labate, Director of Strategy, Development and Operations at CUPRA.
12 pm: Positivity.
SEAT CIO Sebastian Grams meets with SEAT:CODE programmers, whose headquarters on the Rambla, in the heart of the city, was inaugurated last July. This time, however, he connects with them from home. “You always have to look on the bright side and for me it’s that 2020 has given us the opportunity to show that from a distance we continue to operate with the same efficiency and the same team spirit.” Currently, 4,200 people connect remotely every day, 7 times more than before the pandemic, which reached an historical level of Internet traffic in June. In all areas, more than 1,000 employees work remotely 2 days a week, reducing CO2 emissions by 7.2 kg per person per day.
2 pm: Eagerness to improve.
For those who work on-site, the canteen is an essential service. For this reason, its managers have had to also make great efforts to adopt sanitary measures to be able to serve this year more than 500.000 menus safely in all of SEAT’s dining areas.
4 pm: On trend.
2020 also came with the inauguration of CASA SEAT.
More than a thousand engineers and designers continue to create the mobility of the future at the Technical Centre. For example, the Driver Assistance Systems team has made the SEAT Ateca 2020, with its new assistants, one of the safest SUVs on the market: “The pandemic has not prevented us from continuing to innovate the models of the future, thanks in part to digitalisation” , says Teresa Forradellas, an engineer in Chassis Electronics Development.
7 pm: Everybody’s house.
It’s nightfall in Barcelona and Paseo de Gracia is lit up by the CASA SEAT Christmas lights. For its director, Gabriele Palma, the new mobility hub “is the result of the firm decision to keep moving, despite everything.” It opened online due to the conditions arising from the pandemic, but has since held 150 events and received 40,000 visitors. Its aim is to be the meeting point for what makes the city’s heart beat.
9 pm: The mobility of the future.
On the street in front of CASA SEAT, a driver takes one of the 632 100% electric eScooters from the motosharing service that SEAT MÓ has rolled out in Barcelona. It’s the first in Spain to have a pioneering hygienic formula that protects against viruses and bacteria to provide every guarantee to those who need a sustainable means of micromobility.
11 pm: From Martorell to the world.
In the port of Barcelona, a ship with SEAT and CUPRA models departs for Veracruz, Mexico. Meanwhile, in Martorell the night shift continues producing cars without a break. These are 24 intense hours that have been repeated day after day, full of eagerness to overcome each and every one of the challenges of 2020. “This year we’ve shown that we’re capable of anything” says José Manuel. Together with his colleagues, he will continue to work to ensure that we all keep moving.
