Spain hopes to jumpstart electric car industry with EU funds

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Daniel Sánchez is one of the luckier electric car owners in Spain. With a free recharging station less than a kilometer from his home just north of Barcelona, he can keep his Tesla ready to roll.

“I cannot imagine stopping at a gas station ever again," the 41-year-old transport company owner said. "We feel like those people who got off a horse-drawn carriage and climbed into a car. There is no going back.”

Other Spaniards are considerably less enthusiastic. The dearth of places to plug in, compared to western and northern Europe, and the price of electric cars have left Spain lagging as the continent races to get greener.

Now the government wants to usher the entire country into this new paradigm.

The ruling left-wing coalition plans to use a chunk of the 140 billion euros ($166 billion) Spain is set to receive from the European Union’s pandemic recovery plan to kickstart its electric car industry.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is set to visit Madrid on Wednesday while Spain awaits the approval of its plan by Brussels. She will meet with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has compared the EU Next Generation funds to a “new Marshall Plan.”

Spain’s Secretary of State for Industry Raül Blanco told The Associated Press that the government is aiming at spending around 5 billion euros ($6 billion) over the next three years on its electric vehicle initiative.

Spain produced 2.2 million cars and trucks in 2020, second only to Germany in Europe. But only 140,000 of these were electric or hybrids, according to ANFAC, the Spanish Association of Automobile and Truck Manufacturers.

“What we are doing is accelerating a change that is already taking place,” Blanco said. “This is a unique opportunity. The automakers are on board, and there...