I'm not sure that I like the description of what the "content" is from SEAT's 5 year cambelt warranty, where the real cost and destruction will come from if the cambelt or the newly fitted components fail, is elsewhere in the engine, just removing from the customer any need to pay for a new cambelt kit, is not worth the paper it is written on.
As said already, VW Group claim that these newer cam drive systems are more robust than the rather fragile - due to not very durable cambelt driven waterpumps and maybe an idler pulley, also the belts themselves, which in reality did not tend to be, in earlier engines, the root cause of cambelt failures, are manufactured from better materials.
Also, probably as said already or elsewhere, as the water pump is now driven from a cam shaft via its own small belt, failure of that waterpump drive or just the water pump, will only be just that, as/if the engine temperature gets too high, you should be given a warning and so could stop before permanent engine damage occurs, plus, the axial loading on that later design of waterpump will be a lot
lower, in the earlier versions of VW Group belt driven cam engines, the main or heavy load/duty components were the cam belt and so the frontend mounted waterpump was also being treated to being a high load bearing pulley for the belt drive system - and that was not good for the cheap waterpumps fitted - so they could happily fail and bring disaster to the engine.
Edit:- I also will not try to influence you as to when you replace the cambelt, I always got the belt changed at 4 or for later engines 5 years, but mainly that was driven by the knowledge that the small relay pulley/idler that was not included in the VW Group cambelt kit, was typically the first part to fail, followed by the waterpump which again was not included in the VW Group cambelt kit for earlier engines. So, in reality, I ended up getting the cambelt replaced probably as that area of the engine was being opened up to attend to other fragile areas that few people/garages ever discussed that could cause issues.
Keeping the 5 year change period for cambelts has allowed dealerships to prosper quite nicely - note, in the official workshop manuals that VW Group makes available to "outside of the official VW Group service circle", it is stated that there is no stated period for replacing this cambelt now, just periodic inspection after a certain time/distance.
Another Edit:- it seems that some engines, maybe PDI ones, were left on their original cambelt drive "bits" for so long that the belt did indeed start to harden and fall apart - before getting the cambelt replaced - now that is proper "do you feel lucky" territory, not for me.
