Cosworth, which has sites in Northampton and at Silverstone Technology Park, has continued to strengthen its executive team with the appointment of experienced automotive and consumer electronics professional Stefan Balkowiec into the position of Managing Director
Performance Electronics.
Stefan will play a pivotal role in Cosworth’s growth strategy and vision, leading the development of UX and digital cockpit product roadmaps. Bringing over 25 years’ experience and an enviable reputation in the connected car space, he will help Cosworth to further develop its performance electronics division, creating unique value propositions for OEMs based on the company’s extraordinary management of data analysis, control, and power.
In his most recent position, Stefan was Automotive Solutions Director at Harman International, where he led a global product team focused on digital cockpit development. Prior to that he carved out a name for himself at Symphony Teleca and Nokia-owned company NAVTEQ, where – for over a decade – he helped to pioneer automotive applications and products.
Innovation is firmly at the heart of Cosworth’s vision, just as it always has been, as it continues to grow and invest in transportation technology with leading expertise in the areas of performance, digitalisation, and electrification. Performance electronics is a key pillar of the business, and one in which Stefan’s experience will be influential.
Stefan Balkowiec said:
“Electrification is changing everything within vehicle infrastructure, and Cosworth is becoming a major player in this area. I am delighted to join such an epic company, whose vision remains as innovative and cutting edge as when it was first established. Previously, the different domains on vehicles – whether powertrain or electronics – were separate, but the future of mobility hinges, essentially, around a data centre on wheels. Cosworth is going through an important business transformation, and my role is one facet of that evolution. We need to manage that process carefully but setting the company up for impressive and unprecedented growth. We will be retaining the DNA, the essence of what makes Cosworth great, but we’ll be pushing the boundaries like never before – and that’s exciting.
“At Cosworth, we are shifting our focus in this direction, to develop technology that is applicable across a multitude of sectors. We are using our existing motorsport learnings and repurposing this into products that can form part of a common platform. You can see the beginnings of this already with our AliveDrive platform and technical partnerships in the field of data monetisation. The work being done on these programmes will certainly help us to map out Cosworth’s future from an
electronics perspective.”“I believe software and platform virtualisation that can go both road-to-race and race-to-road is a way that we could continue our motorsport learnings. Motorsport is, and always will be, about pushing the boundaries. If we can develop the technology in an economic fashion, we can also scale production to meet OEM requirements for road
vehicles, resulting in road and race applications that share a common platform. We won’t have to develop a different platform
for race and road, instead it’s about managing different applications within the same hardware and how you are running
those applications.”
Find out more about Cosworth at www.cosworth.com
