The government is supporting the investment with a 3 billion forint grant, a ministry statement cited Szijjártó as saying.

Some 4.5 billion forints will go towards the development and testing of electric drive units, and 13.5 billion will be ploughed into capacity expansion, he said.

Szijjártó said innovative technologies were key to the success of national economies.

Hungary spent a record 920 billion forints on research and development last year, he added. The number of employees working in R&D is around 95,000, expected to reach 100,000 soon, he said.

Bosch, which employs nearly 20,000 people in Hungary, is a good example of how Hungary continues to draw investments in R&D as well as production, he said.

Meanwhile, “Bosch is buying products and services from hundreds of SMEs in Miskolc, so the capacity expansion is good news for Hungarian SMEs, too,” he said. Road traffic generates 14% of emissions globally, he said.

“The question isn’t whether European car manufacturing is going to transition to electric vehicles; the question is which countries will win and which will lose out on that transition,” he said.

“Not only has Hungary kept pace in the global competition, it has emerged at the global vanguard of electromobility,” he said.