Sabin Bularda, FEV Romania: “We notice a lack of planning in the automotive market, companies are still undecided and do not know where to invest their money”

“Our company focuses on engineering services, consulting, we have a history in the automotive field, and in recent years we have started to expand our activity to other sectors. Our main activity is to help clients achieve their targets and most of the time these objectives are related to sustainability, whether we are talking about the new Euro 7 standard, or the transition to electrification. We develop solutions and systems so that clients achieve their established objectives.

2024 was a difficult year and a year with a lot of uncertainty awaits us, because the legislation has changed a lot recently.

The CO2 emission standards for 2025 are very ambitious and will most likely have to be revised, and this changes the future plans of car manufacturers. We notice a lack of planning in the automotive market, companies are still undecided and do not know where to invest their money,” Sabin Bularda, Managing Director, FEV Romania said during Automotive Forum 2024 organized by Automotive Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“The investments so far have focused on the transition to Euro 7 and electrification, and we feel that companies are now more attentive to the next steps they want to take, but we are ready to offer sustainability solutions to our clients.

In addition to sustainability and competitiveness, we also need to talk about visibility in future plans. Our objective is to grow in Romania and bring as many international projects as possible to develop locally with Romanian engineers. We are also trying to have a partnership with the academic environment and help them produce future engineers and specialists to hire in the Romanian automotive sector.

We need to find solutions to keep businesses in Europe as much as possible. One of our clients, a large European manufacturer, told us that they plan to reduce the level of technology they send to Asia, because they have identified a possible future risk and want to increase the level of engineering in Europe. Thus, we must be prepared to support their business growth ideas and emerging technologies, because we must remain competitive in relation to China in particular.

We must invest in people and new technologies, and our interest is to develop Romania, but also Eastern Europe.”