Gunter Krasser, Infineon Technologies Romania: “Future cars will be CO2 neutral, autonomous, cyber secure, and also smart”

“Given the difficult market context in 2024, our group had quite remarkable financial results. This shows that we are focusing our activities on the right things. From my 25 years of experience in this industry, I think it was never a year so difficult to predict the next 12 months than now. This comes from a lot of factors, geopolitical changes, international and local elections.

On short term, it’s always good to take a step back and think about what are the big things which are important. We believe that future cars will be CO2 neutral, autonomous, cyber secure, and they will also be smart,” Gunter Krasser, Managing Director, Infineon Technologies Romania said during Automotive Forum 2024 organized by Automotive Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“We are developing semiconductor chips here in Romania. Next year we will celebrate 20 years of activity on the Romanian market. This year we were able to inaugurate one more R&D location here in Romania, in Brasov, to further strengthen our presence locally. We are in the right trends, and that means that we have a growth mission here for sure.

Being in the semiconductor industry, competitiveness is also related to competition when it comes to research and development. We must see what our competitive advantage in Romania is to do it here and not somewhere else. It’s all about what we can provide here in Romania as value versus the costs. What we are doing is high tech, and that always comes with risks. When you add innovation or even breakthrough development, you have even more risks. Usually, companies go to places where the risks for these activities are shared. It’s about funding, so state aid schemes to have these competences in the country. It’s very important what Romania will do next year beside the likely increase in taxes.

In many other countries in the EU, but also worldwide, the state puts a lot of efforts into attracting this high tech and basically the state shares that risks. This is something which is currently missing here in Romania. We are accelerating innovation, and we have a very good track record into having a lot of innovation here in Romania.

The next Romanian Government should really support and invest in research and development with specific state aid programs.”