Battery manufacturing decisions should begin with the work a vehicle must perform. For a pickup carrying equipment, towing a trailer or operating far from reliable charging, battery value depends on how consistently it delivers useful power over years of service. Capacity matters, but so do temperature control, repairability and the industrial knowledge behind the pack.
As CEO of Santana Motors, I see plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, and range-extended electric vehicles, or REEVs, as important options for customers with demanding and varied operating conditions. Their development raises a wider manufacturing question for Europe: how can vehicle producers build battery expertise locally while remaining connected to the international partnerships that make electrification possible?
Designing Around the Duty Cycle
A PHEV combines a rechargeable battery and electric propulsion with a combustion engine. A REEV, in the series architecture discussed here, uses electric motors to drive the wheels, while an onboard engine and generator provide electricity when required. These architectures differ, but both require careful coordination between the battery, power electronics, propulsion controls and thermal systems.
The presence of an engine does not reduce the need for a well-engineered battery. In electric operation, the pack must support acceleration and absorb regenerative braking. During demanding use, its available power and temperature limits influence what the vehicle can sustain. A smaller pack can face substantial power demand relative to its capacity, making the operating profile essential to cell selection and validation.
This is why manufacturers should specify representative working days before choosing a pack. They should understand payload, gradients, ambient temperatures, charging opportunities and sustained loads. For a REEV climbing a long gradient with a trailer, generator output and battery reserves must be assessed together. A headline combined range cannot establish whether the system will sustain that task.
There is an environmental responsibility here too. The benefits of plug-in vehicles depend on regular charging and how they are operated. Battery sizing should support realistic electric journeys, while customers need practical charging arrangements. Manufacturing a technically capable vehicle is only part of delivering lower fuel consumption in service.
Quality Must Connect the Cell to the Vehicle
Battery quality is established throughout production. Cell consistency, electrical connections, cooling circuits, sealing and control software all influence the finished system. An efficient assembly line therefore needs traceability that links incoming components, process settings and test results to each pack and ultimately to the vehicle in which it is installed.
Automation should follow the risks. Recording critical fastening operations, verifying electrical isolation and checking cooling-system integrity can provide more value than automating a process simply because the equipment is available. At lower production volumes, flexible tooling and well-trained technicians may be the sounder starting point, provided process control and verification remain rigorous.
End-of-line testing should be supported by validation under representative conditions. Heat, cold, vibration and water exposure matter particularly for working vehicles. Temperature management deserves special attention because thermal behaviour affects performance, degradation and safety. Service information should then feed back into engineering, helping manufacturers distinguish a component defect from a calibration issue or an operating condition.
Localisation Needs a Credible Sequence
For European manufacturers, battery localisation is a question of capability as well as geography. The International Energy Agency has documented the concentration of battery production and the importance of scale and manufacturing efficiency. Building domestic capacity requires a clear view of which activities can be competitive at the volumes actually available.
At Santana, our ambition is to progressively localise battery-related value in Spain for our PHEV and future REEV programmes. The practical route must be developed with partners and justified stage by stage. Pack integration, testing, diagnostics, service capability and selected components are potential starting points; cell manufacturing requires a different investment case, technical base and production scale.
A sensible sequence would establish vehicle requirements and supplier interfaces first, then develop local integration and validation capabilities, and expand manufacturing activity as demand and economics support it. Local enclosures, thermal components, wiring and other subsystems should be assessed against quality, cost and delivery requirements. Local content becomes durable when suppliers can compete and improve.
Shared pack interfaces can help smaller manufacturers aggregate demand across compatible vehicle programmes. Standardisation should be selective: common connectors, diagnostic protocols and service tools may be useful, while different duty cycles can still require different cells or cooling arrangements. The commercial test is whether commonality reduces total cost without compromising performance, serviceability or the ability to introduce a qualified alternative supplier.
This approach also changes how investment should be evaluated. Equipment expenditure is only one element. Training, process qualification, spare parts, software access and warranty support must be funded. A line with insufficient volume or limited access to engineering knowledge can create substantial fixed costs without delivering meaningful industrial independence.
Partnerships Should Transfer Capability
Strategic alliances can shorten the learning curve, particularly when experienced battery and vehicle partners work with local engineering companies, suppliers and technical institutions. Their value depends on what the relationship enables the local operation to understand and do. Access to diagnostics, agreed technical interfaces, training and effective engineering change procedures should be addressed from the beginning.
Responsibilities must be equally clear. Partners need to agree how faults will be investigated, who can authorise repairs, how warranty costs are allocated and how replacement components will remain available. These arrangements matter throughout the vehicle's service life. They also influence whether local teams can solve problems promptly or must repeatedly wait for decisions elsewhere.
The same discipline should extend to sustainability. Manufacturers should examine production energy, material sourcing, transport, durability and recovery together. Repair and second-life applications require technical and economic assessment; they should never be assumed for every pack. Designing for safe diagnosis and eventual recovery gives future operators better options.
Measuring Industrial Progress
I believe Europe should measure battery localisation through demonstrated capabilities: qualified processes, trained people, reliable products and suppliers able to take greater responsibility. For manufacturers such as Santana, the opportunity is to connect vehicle knowledge with battery expertise through partnerships that develop both. Each investment should leave the local operation better equipped to build, maintain and improve the next generation of vehicles.
