Clarios, a global leader in advanced low-voltage energy storage solutions and owner of Varta Automotive, and Piaxo, a Romanian automotive engineering company, are deepening their strategic engineering partnership in Romania to support innovation, international engineering collaboration, and future mobility solutions.
By expanding R&D activity in Romania, the partnership supports Clarios’ growing European technology footprint in advanced battery and low-voltage systems.
Credit: Clarios
From the left -Dr. Alexander von Laack, Chief Technology Officer, Clarios, and Ion Petic, Chief Executive Officer, Piaxo
The partnership connects Piaxo’s multidisciplinary engineering capabilities in a new Timișoara centre with Clarios’ global technology organisation while maintaining both companies as separate organisations with distinct roles and responsibilities.
The new centre supports R&D projects in areas such as battery management systems (BMS) for next-generation energy storage solutions, including sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries, as well as inverter and supercapacitor technologies essential for modern vehicles and safety-critical functions.
Since the start of the collaboration, Piaxo has continued to expand its engineering organisation in Timișoara and today employs nearly fifty engineering professionals. The team contributes expertise across disciplines relevant to advanced low-voltage systems development, including software, systems engineering, validation and related engineering activities.
The announcement comes as Piaxo expands into its mixed-use ISHO office location in Timișoara, with engineering facilities and a development and testing laboratory. The location provides a foundation for cross-functional engineering, advanced validation, expertise development and international collaboration in one of Romania’s important technology hubs. The collaboration highlights the quality of Piaxo’s engineering environment, the relevance of Timișoara as a technology location in the European automotive landscape, and the shared ambition of both companies to support complex engineering work through international collaboration. It also reinforces Piaxo’s role as a Romanian engineering company contributing to future mobility solutions.
“This partnership with Piaxo supports our broader technology transformation and strengthens how we collaborate across engineering disciplines,” said Dr. Alexander van Laack, Chief Technology Officer, Clarios. “As low-voltage systems become more advanced, connected and software-enabled, partnerships like this help us combine complementary expertise in a structured and globally connected engineering environment.”
For Piaxo, the collaboration strengthens its position as a trusted technology partner and employer in the Romanian market. “Our engineering facilities and development laboratory in Timișoara mark an important step in the development of our engineering capabilities,” said Ion Petic, Chief Executive Officer, Piaxo. “Our collaboration with Clarios creates opportunities for our engineers to contribute to globally relevant engineering work, build specialised expertise and collaborate with international engineering teams on increasingly complex technology programmes.”
The collaboration reflects Clarios’ evolution toward more advanced, connected and software-enabled low-voltage systems. It also highlights how Piaxo’s engineering capabilities in Romania support engineering processes, technology development, validation and globally relevant product development objectives.