Hungary has long subsidized car makers, and EV-focused German firms are the primary recipients of more than $871 million in subsidies for the automotive industry since 2004, according to Andrea Éltető of the Institute for World Economics, a Budapest-based think tank. She tallied more than $2.57 billion in paid or pending subsidies since 2018 for EV battery factories, with South Korean and Chinese multinationals the top beneficiaries. That comes to more than $3.44 billion in state support for green cars and their parts, in a country with a GDP of about $223 billion.