The company to spend €1.4bn exclusively on electric vehicle development
Skoda Auto allocates investment of €1.4bn in electric vehicles. (Credit: ŠKODA AUTO a.s.)
Skoda Auto Group said that it will invest nearly €2.5bn in cutting-edge technologies over the next five years, with more than half of that allocated for developing electromobility.
The Czech automobile manufacturer will spend €1.4bn exclusively for developing electric vehicles.
Skoda Auto will allocate nearly €650m for digitalisation activities.
Apart from that, the car manufacturer will invest €350m for modernising its plants and production facilities with a goal to maintain profitable growth.
The company aims to gain additional expertise in the subjects of e-mobility, software, and digitalisation for protecting jobs in the group and to continue to provide state-of-the-art products and mobility solutions to customers.
The announcements were made by the automobile manufacturer while disclosing its results for the 2020 financial year. The company’s sales revenue for the 2020 financial year was down by 13.8% year-over-year to €17.1bn.
Skoda Auto CEO Thomas Schäfer said that despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the company could deliver over a million vehicles to its customers across the world for the seventh consecutive year.
Schäfer said: “In Europe, we were even able to increase our market share to 5.4%, further strengthening our position as one of the leading brands in the volume segment. With the launch of the new-generation OCTAVIA, we have systematically modernised our model portfolio and continued our e-mobility campaign with the world premiere of the ENYAQ iV.
“Over the next five years, we will be investing around 2.5 billion euros in future technologies to successfully guide the company through the transformation process.”
In 2017, Skoda Auto announced that it would manufacture car models that run entirely on electricity at its Mladá Boleslav site in the Czech Republic from 2020.
Earlier this year, the Czech automobile manufacturer launched a new programme called AccelerateIT for speeding up its digital transformation, especially in terms of data and artificial intelligence (AI).
The carmaker is collaborating with Microsoft to train its IT staff on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Microsoft will also give special tools to the company apart from support from Azure specialists for cloud architecture, data, and AI technologies.