Hungarian officials see self-driving cars as key to national development

Hungarian Economy Minister Mihaly Varga said on Thursday self-driving vehicles were key to national development.

While attending a conference here on The Car of the Future, Varga called the self-driving car a huge opportunity for Hungary's technological development, given that almost all major automotive manufacturers were present in Hungary.

The government is ready to support research and development in this area and to offer the best possible conditions for advances in the field, he said.

Hungary needs to shift to an innovation driven economy which means boosting knowledge-based industry, intensive research and development, and the introduction of new technologies, Varga said. Industry, he added, was one of the most important engines of growth in the Hungarian economy.

The automotive industry accounts for 20.2 percent of the overall foreign direct investment (FDI) in the manufacturing industry and the volume of investments is nearly 3.4 billion euros (about 3.8 billion dollars). It currently employs 144,000 people in Hungary, if suppliers are included.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who also attended the conference, announced that a new test track would be built in Zalaegerszeg, western Hungary.

According to Orban, the new test track would be an ideal place to test the self-driving cars and related technological systems.

Varga, automotive company heads, and research institutions signed a declaration of intent involving the use of the new, not yet built, test track. The ministry said the signatories planned to cooperate in studying self-driving cars and their systems, including connected-car IT systems, fuel consumption, and real-driving emissions, as well as safety.

Since self-driving cars are highly Internet-dependent, Orban also announced that the government was considering cutting the Value Added Tax (VAT) on Internet services from the current 27 percent. If Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data permits, he said, the tax could be cut to as low as 5 percent, which could be a major boost to the industry.

Speaking for all of Europe, Gunther Oettinger, the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, said Europe needed to take the lead in the digital transformation of industry or lose its competitive edge.

Information technology and software are a critical part of the new industrial revolution, he said, noting the vehicle industry was about to change drastically with the birth of self-driving cars. Not only would it reduce accidents but it would also cut down on traffic jams and carbon emissions. Endit