Spain grants EUR 53.8m + EUR 456k loan to InoBat for Valladolid EV-battery gigafactory under PERTE VEC III (later renounced)

Mechanism

PERTE VEC (Vehículo Eléctrico y Conectado) is Spain's Recovery-and- Resilience-Plan-funded strategic project for the EV and connected-vehicle value chain. The third call under PERTE VEC specifically targeted battery-manufacturing capacity; the programme as a whole has distributed close to EUR 2.5 billion to roughly 300 companies across 15 autonomous communities. InoBat's award (EUR 53.8m grant + EUR 456k loan, ~EUR 54.3m combined public support against a EUR 712m total project cost) was one of the larger single-project allocations in the battery tranche, targeting a 32 GWh gigafactory in Valladolid with a 2027 partial / 2029 full production timeline.

InoBat is majority-controlled by outside investors but 25%-owned by China's Gotion High-Tech, itself part-owned by Volkswagen. Roughly two months after the award, MINCOTUR recorded InoBat's withdrawal of the grant; press reporting attributes this to the Valladolid project being absorbed into a larger, separately structured Gotion-led investment covering the full battery supply chain (raw materials through European distribution) rather than InoBat's narrower cell-manufacturing scope.

Downstream implications

• Illustrates a recurring pattern in EU battery industrial policy:

state aid awarded to a minority-Chinese-owned entity gets superseded once the majority Chinese partner (Gotion) restructures the project under its own control — the subsidy follows the reorganised corporate structure, not the original applicant.

• A separate, larger MINCOTUR award to Gotion High-Tech directly for two

Valladolid battery mega-plants was reported in May 2026 (~EUR 92m) — worth filing as its own action and linking back here via responds_to once verified, as the likely successor instrument to this withdrawn grant.

• Severity kept low (2) given the award was withdrawn within ~10 weeks

and never disbursed; retained in the register because the PERTE VEC III mechanism and the InoBat/Gotion ownership dynamic are relevant to tracking EU battery-supply-chain industrial policy.

Open questions

• Whether InoBat retains any independent Valladolid role post-Gotion

absorption, or exits the project entirely.

• Exact terms of the Gotion-led successor investment and whether it

triggers a new, separate PERTE VEC or bilateral state-aid award (see the May 2026 EUR 92m Gotion report above).