Hungarian automotive industry: week 14 2019 edition
Audi pays bonus, Videoton boss sceptical about Hungarian wage boom, Bosch appoints Hungarian director to head Budapest-based development centre. Let’s recap what the 14th week of the year brought in Hungary’s automotive sector.
“The employment of persons with reduced capacity to work is mandatory for companies with more than 25 employees. 5 percent of the company personnel must comprise of such labourers. If this requirement is not met, a rehabilitation allowance must be paid for the missing headcount.
"This amounts to HUF 1,341,000 per person per annum. However, if a company employs a person with reduced capacity to work in four hours a day, it costs them HUF 894,000 a year. Therefore, it is cheaper to employ them than paying an allowance,” Erika Jókai, lecturer in Óbuda University’s rehabilitation environment planning programme, told us in an interview.
Ottó Sinkó, Videoton’s co-chief executive, says the current wage boom in Hungary exceeds productivity, and could result in a deficit in competitiveness and severe damages. He says the Hungarian wage bubble could burst within 2019.
Although the plant director at Audi Hungaria called the company’s financial performance in 2018 “moderate”, the Győr plant’s employees will still receive a bonus with their May salary. We asked how much bonus Audi Hungaria paid to its Hungarian employees. In our recap we also had a look at international payments.
“Every year, the simulation market grows 11 percent on average. This represents a huge growth, and still remains a moderate estimate. We need a multitude of engineers in the market, and the current development of the sector is still defined by the availability of well trained engineers.
"Although much of the current engineer generation could be re-trained for the field of simulation, we are struggling with shortage of capacities. This poses the largest challenge,” Dávid Felhős, head of CEE of the international society of numerical simulation engineers, told us in an interview.
What sort of decisions and outcomes can we expect from an autonomous vehicle controlled by artificial intelligence. This was the topic at a conference held by a research group at Széchenyi István University focused on the legal aspects of autonomous vehicles.
“Electric forklifts have an extremely quiet operation on the production area, which makes them difficult to notice. If, for example, a pedestrian steps out from cover, the driver has no chance of avoiding them. This is why a blue arrow is projected in front of the machine as it reverses.
"Even if the pedestrian is unable to see the forklift, the blue arrow is immediately recognizable. In certain areas, such as intersections, the forklift’s sign is projected on the ground to alert workers of forklift traffic. This already works in practice, and is likely to be applied in more and more areas of production,” Oliver Jablonski, head of Audi’s health and safety department, told us about their best practices.
Bosch has appointed a Hungarian to head the company’s Budapest Development Center.
Schaeffler Savaria Kft. has expanded its manufacturing area with a 3,000sqm production hall in Szombathely.
Electric scooter sharing service Lime will offer its services in Budapest. The opening date is not yet revealed.
In March, 13,391 new cars were registered in Hungary, up by 4.9 percent year-on-year, with passenger car sales still led by Suzuki.
Innovation and technology minister László Palkovics held a presentation at Berkeley University in the United States in a symposium held on the manufacturing and testing of autonomous vehicles in Hungary.
