Romania's Rombat Starts Hybrid Battery Development

Rombat Bistrita, a Romanian battery manufacturer, is going to give it a try and step into the crowded hybrid battery manufacturing sector using an ambitious plan backed by European funds. According to zf.ro, the Romanian company will invest around 10 million Euros in the new project, with half of the sum to be provided by the European Union.

Obviously, the biggest enigma is the name (or maybe the names) of the carmaker/carmakers that could partner with Rombat for such a project.

The existing rumors are claiming that such a possibility is Renault, which has already announced several battery-electric models to be launched in the short-term plan. Otherwise, Rombat is already working with Renault and PSA, so providing batteries for their electric models would pretty much make sense.

On the other hand, Ford could benefit from such an agreement for ECOnetic and ECOboost, two of its engines that could be coupled to Rombat's batteries. The aforementioned source reports that representatives of the two companies are already holding talks on such a partnership, but details are yet to be disclosed.

Ford is currently running a single Romanian plant, in Craiova, where it assembles the Transit Connect but the company has already confirmed plans to bring a second model in the small-car category.

At this time, Renault and its Romanian brand Dacia are the two biggest clients for the battery manufacturer, with nearly 800,000 units delivered to Dacia and to the rest of the market. Furthermore, in 2009 Rombat exported 1.2 million batteries to the aftermarket sector and to Peugeot Slovakia.