The Moves Plan to support the purchase of electrified cars and the installation of charging points died with the last edition of 2025, which has practically already run out of funds. Instead, the Executive will launch in the next few weeks a new aid program for the purchase of electric vehicles, which will bring a fundamental change compared to previous Movements: the management of the funds will no longer be the responsibility of the autonomous communities, informed sources confirm to this newspaper. This is a request repeated ad nauseam by the automotive sector, which has seen how the Moves advanced at very different speeds depending on the autonomy: the average waiting time before the applicant received the subsidy was between one and two years with the previous system, depending on the territory.
The new program will, in this way, emulate Reinicia Auto+, the plan launched in the Valencian Community to help all those who lost their vehicles in the disaster of 29 October 2024. Reinicia Auto+ was managed directly by the central government and was praised by the sector for its speed in disbursing subsidies. “The best plan for us is the Valencia plan, which has left customers, manufacturers and dealers satisfied, everyone. Between the month of waiting for the Valencia plan and the 18 months for the Moves, I will limit myself to one month,” explains a Motor source.
The new national aid program for electric vehicles is part of the large shock plan on which the sector and the Ministry of Industry have been working all this year and which Josep Maria Recasens himself, president of Anfac, the national association of the automotive industry, mentioned for the first time at the end of 2024. This automotive strategic plan, called Plan Auto 2030, includes numerous measures, such as specific aid lines to attract the production of electric vehicles and batteries to Spain; Incentives for research and development; initiatives to achieve competitive energy prices or the proposal for a change in car taxation that would allow aid for electric vehicles to be self-financing. The latter, however, several sources agree, will not happen, at least for now. For the new incentive plan for electricity, the Executive is preparing an item of which it is not yet known where it will come from or its amount. For reference, Moves 2025 had 400 million.
Another question is what will happen to all those people who applied for Moves and remained on the waiting list after the funds ran out. National automotive association Anfac reported in September that the Move had already sold out in Andalusia, Aragon, Cantabria, Catalonia, the Valencian Community, Galicia, Madrid, Navarra and the Basque Country, which represent 85% of the Spanish electric car market. The industry itself had predicted in April that at the current pace the program was unlikely to make it through the summer, with sales almost double compared to the previous year. The latest move was approved on April 1, retroactive to January 1, to cover all pending requests since the beginning of the year, after the previous move fell in January with the rest of the omnibus decree due to a vote against Congress by PP, Vox and Junts.
A plan to save the Spanish car industry
Spain is weathering the international storm that is hitting the automobile well, with a slight drop in production this year due to the sluggishness of European markets, but making new investments, such as the CATL and Stellantis gigafactory in Zaragoza or the battery plant that Gotion and Inobat will build in Valladolid. However, the sector is aware of the risks that the reconversion of this sector entails for Spain and hence the need for the Auto 2030 Plan arises. “The automobile generates around 85,000 million euros, of which half corresponds to industrial activity. Of this part, between 20% and 30% (i.e. between 8,500 and 12,750 million) are at risk if we do nothing, since our added value depends for 95% from the combustion vehicle ecosystem,” Recasens said in an interview with this medium published in September. The 2030 Car Plan will be presented by the end of the year, according to the Government.
This general plan for the sector, although it was mainly drawn up between the Ministry of Industry and Anfac, was presented to “everyone”, according to Recasens, including in this sentence the autonomous communities, the opposition, the municipalities and other automotive associations. Even if it enjoys “general support”, according to the manager, industry sources are waiting to know what funds it will have at its disposal so that it is a truly useful plan and not just a list of good intentions.
The domestic auto industry faces the great challenge of converting its factories to electric vehicles, an area in which China is overwhelmingly winning over Europe, controlling the entire value chain of both batteries and car production. Spain, in fact, has managed to attract Chinese companies to establish industrial projects in the country: the aforementioned Gotion and CATL are joined by Envision, with its battery plant in Extremadura, or Chery, which has settled in the factories of the former Nissan Barcelona. Furthermore, the country aspires to attract other large companies such as BYD, which is targeting Spain to build its third European factory, after Hungary and Turkey, which has a free trade agreement with the EU.
