We are pleased to announced the nominees for the AUTO Connected Car News’ Tech CARS Awards—the people’s choice awards for products, services and innovations in the car technology space. Voting starts today and ends on midnight PST January 31.
Competition this year is fierce and we created new categories to express trends within the industry. The ability to write-in nominees returns, if a substantial amount of write-in votes appear for the same person or company they will be added. Please read the categories clearly — one year we had an automotive supply company nominate itself for the Edsel/Yugo award—-that’s for someone for something that does something B-A-D therefore we in turn added the company to nomination list for nominating themselves for the Edsel/Yugo award.
New Best of Categories
New categories this year include new SUV electric vehicles and trucks, video, partnerships and wireless in-car payments.
Nominees for Best Newly Announced and Anticipated Electric Vehicle Coming to Market SUV or Similar are Fisker Ocean, Canoo, Mustang Mach-E, Byton M-Byte, Faraday Future FF 91 and Rivian R1S.
Nominees for the Best Design of an Electric Truck with Off-Road Expected in the Near Future are Rivian R1T, Bollinger B1 B2 and Lordstown Motors Endurance.
Partnerships are becoming more important to the automotive industry, birthing the new category: Best Industry Partnerships and/or Collaboration
- Automotive Grade Linux.
- Automotive Edge Computing Consortium.
- Planet M.
- General Motors Marketplace.
We never need to get out a car to pay for anything again as a new ecosystem for in-car payments evolves. Nominees for the Best Connected Car Way to Pay for Parking Donuts & More:
- General Motors’ Marketplace.
- FCA Uconnect Market in-vehicle commerce platform.
- Xevo Market for Hyundai.
- SiriusXM e-wallet powered by Visa validated by biometrics.
Video is becoming more important to the industry, many consumers are buying cars just from watching videos, therefore we wanted to honor some video players nominees for Best Video of a Trade or Auto Show are:
- Auto Futures – Messe Frankfort.
- Auto Futures – Shanghai Auto Show.
- Autobytel – NAIS, Detroit Auto Show.
- WayaLife Jeep Forum SEMA 2019.
Returning and Updated Categories
Car Technology Celebrity, Spokesperson or Leader of the Year returns with the nominees:
- Henrik Fisker, CEO and designer Fisker Ocean for crusading for a clean affordable SUV.
- Joann Muller, Transportation Axios for bringing automotive news into the explainable mainstream.
- Mary Nichols, Chair of the California Air Resources Board for standing up to the administration and fighting for strict California air quality standards.
- Jennifer Newman, Editor-in-Chief Cars.com for encouraging more women in automotive careers.
The public relations category has been split into two launch of an automotive brand or vehicle model and startup.
Best Publicity Campaign for Automotive Launch or Event nominees are:
- Bollinger Motors’ Mark Foster documenting the entire process.
- Nathan Barbour, head of brand creative at Lucid Motors for Lucid Air’s “Brand that is not Brand”
- Stacy Morris , Futuristic Communications for Canoo launch event.
Best Publicity for Automotive Startup nominees are:
- Natasha Fisker – Fisker Ocean.
- Jillian Goldberg – GuardKnox.
- Scott Fosgard Com. – May Mobility.
- Deb Montner – Teraki.
We zoomed on just Los Angeles and the surround area for the our event category with nominees for the Best Southern California Automotive Event
- The Future of the Automobile — Petersen Automotive Museum.
- Smart Cities Symposium – Presented by Ford.
- ArtCenter College’s Car Classic, Pasadena, California.
- CoMotion LA, Los Angeles
The software category has been updated with some new players Best New Software Concepts Designs:
- Xlinix FPGA, hardware programmable SoCs.
- Teraki AI & edge data processing software makes applications and algorithms.
- RightWare Kanzi product portfolio.
- Wind River AUTOSAR Adaptive Automotive Software.
The Edsel Yugo Award returns with an about-face for a former Tech CARS winner Elon Musk who has not been behaving lately, however it was a good year for bad guys, because either they were having their way, getting caught or getting their ways.
Nominees for The Edsel Yugo Award for the Worst, Horrific Actions by a Person in the Automotive Tech Industry
- Donald Trump for rolling back emission standards and imposing tariffs.
- Carlos Ghosn for filing false financial disclosures.
- Elon Musk for the broken Cybertruck bullet proof window.
- Elon Musk for calling Thai rescuer “Pedo.”
- Former UAW Pres. Gary Jones for using union funds for private villas, cigars, liquor, meals & golf as well as destroying evidence and obstructing justice.
Ludicrous Journalism New
It seems if Elon Musk does anything or runs over an orange cone in a parking lot, it gets reported, therefore he deserves a topic just for how ridiculous the blogger boys report anything Tesla. We chose topics of actual news stories, that we found ridiculous and or ludicrous about Tesla for Most Ridiculous/Ludicrous Coverage of Anything Tesla Related:
- Tesla Nap Mode is coming sleeping in car with alarm clock.
- Ford Mustang gets towed for blocking supercharger.
- Will Tesla Cybertruck fit inside a home garage?
- Tesla Cybertruck’s rear seat lever spotted.
- Thanksgiving Mashed Potatoes sclupted in the shape of Cybertruck.
Public relations pros or reps of the aforementioned nominees (except for Edsle/Yugo and Ludicrous) are welcome to send a one-sentence description of why they should win, that will be added to the voting pages.
Please be sure to read our rules for usage of nominations, winners and graphics The nominees rotate order automatically through CrowdSignal software. We want to thank CrowdSignal for grandfathering our plan to keep it affordable and monitor-able.
Please feel free to publicize, re-Tweet, invite your friends and more. The voting results will be announced in February.
Let the voting begin:
“Great share!”