Economy Minister wants Portugal to focus on electric cars

The Economy Minister said Thursday in Brussels that, with the automotive sector on the rise in Portugal, the country wants to be on the front line in the transition to other types of low-carbon mobility, namely electric cars.

According to the News Agency Lusa, on the margins of a Competitiveness Council in the European Union and a meeting of the European Alliance for Batteries, Pedro Siza Vieira talked about the importance of this programme and Portugal’s interest in participating actively.

The Minister pointed out that “the Alliance for Batteries programme is an important programme that aims to ensure that Europe has the technological capacity and industrial capacity to autonomously develop an absolutely indispensable technology for the process of transition to a low carbon economy”.

“Portugal is interested because obviously we have a very important automotive sector. This year we will beat the record of exports of the automobile sector as a whole, but also of the number of vehicles produced in Portugal. We’re going to join the club of major car producers. And we also have a whole value chain very focused on the car”, he added.

Pedro Siza Vieira ended by saying that Portugal should be “at the forefront of the transition to a new mobility model less based on the internal combustion engine and more on other types of mobility”.