Hungarian automotive industry: week 13 2022
Fotó: Facebook/szijjarto.peter.official
Largest automotive investment of the year inaugurated, TDK expands with sensors division, Knorr-Bremse R&D centre launches recruiting campaign. Let’s recap what last week brought in Hungary’s automotive sector. Clicking on the highlighted items will open the full stories.
The year’s largest automotive investment in Hungary has been inaugurated. Japanese-owned Toray Industries Hungary Kft. has built a new plant for the production of battery separators for electric cars.
TDK Hungary Components Kft. will expand its Szombathely plant with a HUF 26 billion investment. The project will add new capacities for the local production of automotive sensors, creating 250 jobs in the process.
The Knorr-Bremse Commercial Vehicle Systems division’s R&D department is expanding with a 5,000-square-metre office facility and 100 engineers. The newly-hired engineers will participate in the development of solutions for the motoring challenges in the decades to come.
Volkswagen has resumed the production of vehicles for the MEB platform at its Dresden and Zwickau plants, which had been previously halted due to the situation in Ukraine. On the hand, the company has announced a closure taking effect between April 4th and 8th due to the global chip shortage and the prolonged conflict in Ukraine.
Last week, Stellantis’ Russia-based van plant found itself on the verge of shutdown, while MAN introduced reduced working times affecting 11,000 German employees due to parts shortages from Ukrainian suppliers.
Daimler Truck also introduced reduced working hours at two of its German units due to the global microchip shortage.
According to analysts, it poses a great risk for CEE countries that electrobility-related investments are primarily made in Western Europe, while production capacities for conventional drive models are gradually transferred to the CEE region. This trend is having a detrimental effect to these countries’ competitiveness now and for the future.
