SEAT, FAD Exhibit Development of Industrial Materials

‘MATER IN PROGRESS. NEW MATERIALS, NEW INDUSTRY’ EXHIBITION

Martorell, 07-02-2008 -- The search for innovation in materials for the automobile is crucial to the development of the sector. This is one of the aspects foregrounded in the exhibition entitled ‘MATER in Progress. New materials, New Industry’, to run from 8th February to 28th April at the headquarters of the FAD (Foment de les Arts i del Disseny/Arts and Design Promotion Centre), with SEAT as the principal sponsor. The exhibition’s goal is to provide information about innovation and technological development via the use of materials in different industrial and economic sectors.

The exhibition was officially presented today at FAD headquarters, in the presence of Secretary General for Industry Joan Trullén, FAD president and MATER co-director Beth Galí, designer and MATER co-director Ramón Úbeda, exhibition commissioner Javier Peña, and Frank Bekemeier, SEAT’s Vice-President for Research and Development (R&D).

SEAT’s head of R&D underscored the importance of innovation as “an essential requirement for competitiveness, not only for SEAT, but also for the Catalonian industry. This exhibition reinforces the company’s commitment to its immediate surroundings and is a firm undertaking aimed at the creation of a powerful innovative industrial fabric in Catalonia and technology transfer between companies and society at large”.

The exhibition is part of a wider-ranging project embracing the creation of the first materials consultation centre in Spain –a materials library or ‘Materialsthèque’– providing a permanent forum for discussion, ideas exchange, consultation and information for professionals, designers, engineers and architects. Input to it will be provided by agents working on a daily basis in this sphere.

And SEAT’s Technical Center will be the user of honour of this ‘Materialsthèque’. Thus, services will be provided to more than 1,100 highly-qualified persons working day-in day-out in the SEAT Technical Center, which incorporates the SEAT Design Center, one of the most modern design complexes in the world in the automobile sector.

And from these centres will emerge the models to be put on show during the exhibition: the SEAT Tribu, a concept car providing a foretaste of the brand’s future models; the SEAT León Ecomotive, one of the ‘greenest’ cars in its segment at only 119gm/km of CO2 emissions; and a cut-away León providing a view of the multitude of materials used inside a vehicle.

Source: SEAT

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