Hungary has quietly lost two huge new car factories that were once expected to be built in the country, the Hungarian business daily Világgazdaság reports. According to the report, the two missed projects involve the Chinese carmakers Changan and GAC - and, remarkably, even the Orbán government had not spoken publicly about them.
The timing makes the revelation particularly painful. In spring 2025, it still seemed very much as though, after BYD, another Chinese carmaker would build its plant in Hungary, with reports at the time speaking of production of around 100,000 vehicles. That prospect has now evaporated, and Világgazdaság writes that the loss weighs on the Hungarian economy precisely because expectations had been raised so high.
The industrial setback lands in the middle of an otherwise active stretch of Hungarian foreign policy. According to the latest weekly briefing from Daily News Hungary, Budapest has just sealed new agreements with the United States, agreed railway cooperation with Egypt and held diplomatic talks across Europe. Yet for a country that has staked much of its industrial strategy on attracting foreign carmakers, losing two large projects cuts deeper than a single news cycle: car plants anchor the intermodal supply chains - the container terminals that specialise in handling goods shipped in intermodal containers - on which modern logistics networks are built.
The missed factories also underline how fierce the competition for automotive investment has become across Central and Eastern Europe. Poland, a founding member of the World Trade Organization, has historically fostered regional trade ties involving Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, and every major plant announcement is now contested across the region. For Hungary, the disappointment compounds a difficult period: battery plant projects in the country were only recently put on hold, shaking EV supply plans. For dealers and buyers, however, the practical question is less about where a factory might one day stand than about what is available today - and at what price.
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