Regarding the Open Innovation Autonomous Vehicle Development and Testing Platform Project (OPINA), which was implemented with a budget of 5 million euros within the scope of the Competitive Sectors Program, Mehmet Fatih Kacır, Minister of Industry and Technology, said, "The testing, integration and certification needed for the products and services developed by our mobility ecosystem." We are realizing the center that provides the infrastructure. "We are rapidly carrying out the necessary work to ensure that our center, which tests software with virtual simulations and offers an innovation platform open to everyone, receives international accreditation and regulation tests are carried out in our country." said.
Minister Kacır spoke at the opening ceremony of the Open Innovation Autonomous Vehicle Development and Testing Platform Project (OPINA). Stating that this center will provide infrastructure support to national and international organizations that develop autonomous and communicating vehicle technologies, he said:
The global automotive industry is in a great change and transformation. In the sector, traditional profit pools such as vehicle and spare parts sales, after-sales and insurance services are being replaced by business models based on electric and autonomous vehicles and shared services. Turkish automotive industry is one of the critical sectors of our economy with 35,7 billion dollars of exports and nearly 500 thousand jobs; It is facing this transformation with our strong R&D and innovation ecosystem, qualified human resources, main industry and sub-industry.
As the Ministry of Industry and Technology, we are implementing our projects with the vision of our country being a pioneer, not a follower, of the revolution in the mobility sector. With the "Mobility Vehicles and Technologies Strategy Roadmap" that we announced in 2022, we analyzed the current situation in our country and in the world and revealed the needs.
We have determined strategic goals, critical policies and projects in order to facilitate our country's adaptation to the transformation in mobility. We have identified concrete targets in many strategic areas, from electric vehicle and battery production to charging stations, from driverless vehicle development to test centers.
I would like to briefly touch upon a few of our goals in the road map in which we prepared our future vision in close cooperation with the industry; In 2030; We aim to increase the market share of electric and rechargeable hybrid vehicles in Turkey to 35 percent and our localization rate in these vehicles to 75 percent. We will be the leader in Europe and among the top 5 in the world in the production of electric, connected and autonomous light and heavy commercial vehicles.
With battery module and subcomponent investments, we will make our country one of the regional Battery Production Bases. We will be among the top 10 countries that develop and export connected and autonomous vehicle software, especially cyber security, driving safety and driver behavior modeling software.
One of the most important traces of our new approach is our electric and smart vehicle, Togg, which we launched on October 4, 29, just 2022 years after its establishment. Today, more than 27 thousand Togg smart vehicles are on Türkiye's roads. Togg; It is proof of what Turkish engineers and technicians can achieve in mobility. As Turkey, we are in the new mobility ecosystem with Togg! we said. We have entered a period in which we have stepped up our work.
We continue to mobilize all our resources, together with our Ministry and affiliated organizations, to make Turkey a global center of attraction in the production of electric, connected, autonomous vehicles and technologies. In the mobility sector with the Technology-Focused Industrial Move Program, which focuses on the development and production of high-tech products in Turkey; We support 32 investment projects with a total size exceeding 38 billion lira, from the development and mass production of smart urban electric public transportation vehicles to advanced driving support systems, from the development of smart camera systems to be used in autonomous vehicles to charging ecosystem investments for electric vehicles.
In cooperation with Informatics Valley and Togg, the center of the new mobility ecosystem in our country, we are organizing an acceleration program for innovative startups in the fields of electric vehicles and mobility. To date, more than a thousand technology startups have applied to the program, which aims to accelerate innovative ideas in this sector.
More than 120 of our startups had the opportunity to cooperate with OEMs, suppliers and organizations included in the Turkish Mobility Cluster. Of course, R&D and innovation competence is a must for a strong production infrastructure in the automotive industry. To develop new solutions by carrying out qualified R&D studies in mobility vehicles and technologies in the coming period; We attach importance to combining the academic potential, human resources and infrastructure of universities with entrepreneurship culture.
We are taking steps to strengthen industry and university cooperation. To date, we have supported 234 R&D projects of 284 technology startups in the field of mobility vehicle technologies in our technoparks. With TÜBİTAK scholarship and support programs, we have supported 22 projects and 129 academicians in the field of mobility with a total of 2 billion 806 million lira in the last 5 years.
With the project that we opened and was implemented with a budget of 5 million euros within the scope of the Competitive Sectors Program of our Ministry supported by the European Union (EU); We have opened a center that provides the testing, integration and certification infrastructure needed for the products and services developed by our mobility ecosystem.
We are rapidly carrying out the necessary work to ensure that our center, which tests software with virtual simulations and offers an innovation platform open to everyone, receives international accreditation and regulation tests are carried out in our country. With OPINA, we will also launch a smart test track for the physical testing of autonomous and connected vehicles in our country in the coming period. This center; It will make significant contributions to the transformation and competitiveness of our country's mobility ecosystem. It will lead to the emergence of successful initiatives and Turcorns in this field from our country.
