Mercedes-Benz to open R&D centre in Hungary

Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Péter Szijjártó, has said that Mercedes is investing around €55 million, or HUF 21.6 billion, into the facility, which will be located at the Mercedes plant in Kecskemét in central Hungary. He also confirmed that this investment will be supported by government funding of 4.3 billion HUV (€11m) .Mercedes hasn’t directly confirmed the specifics of the kind of work will be performed at the new R&D centre, but the minister has said it will involve “the testing of prototypes”. Szijjártó said in a Facebook post: “The engineers here are involved in the early hardware and software development phase of vehicle development and everything that is developed here for cars based on new electric platforms to be used by Mercedes.” Hungarian engineers will work at the facility, something the minister said was “very rare” for a country the size of Hungary.Jörg Burzer, Head of Production, Quality and Supply Chain at Mercedes-Benz Group AG, provided some additional details on the initiative, stating that the site will focus on the integration of prototypes for new EV platforms.Burzer said at a launch event: “This close German-Hungarian or Hungarian-German cooperation in the context of prototype development and its integration is considerably extending the portfolio of the Kecskemét site towards innovation and development.”It’s the latest addition to the Kecskemét plant, which opened in 2012 has so far manufactured over two million vehicles and has received over a billion Euros in investment into its production lines and digitalisation. Ungarn Heute highlights that its production area has ‘virtually doubled’ with additional capacity for 300,000. There are also plans for new body and battery assembly plants as part of this expansion.ungarnheute.hu, facebook.com, hungarytoday.hu