Altair Enlighten Award announces 57 automotive industry finalists

Each finalist represents an innovative initiative that has realised significant results or potential in weight saving, cost reduction and performance improvement.

“It’s been a privilege to be associated with Altair and CAR to bring the Enlighten competition to life,” said Gary Latham, Sr. Technological Specialist at Pratt & Miller Engineering, and a long-time judge for the Enlighten Award. “Every year brings more submissions and increasingly clever ways of removing weight from our vehicles.  Observing the submissions grow in quantity and quality over the years is very encouraging because it demonstrates the commitment by the automotive companies and their suppliers to decrease the mass of our vehicles leading to a cleaner future for all of us.”

The awards for the ultimate winners will be presented at the 53^rd CAR Management Briefing Seminars (MBS) held in Traverse City, Michigan on July 30, 2018. The Enlighten Award will be presented in four categories: Full Vehicle, Module, Enabling Technology, and a newly added category entitled ‘The Future of Lightweighting’.

The Full Vehicle award is given for exceptional achievement in the lightweighting of an entire vehicle. The Module award is given for innovation in the lightweighting of a subsystem or component. The Enabling Technology award is reserved for any technology that enables lightweight innovation in a vehicle, such as a material or joining technology. The new Future of Lightweighting award opens the playing field up to technology that is not yet commercially available. It is reserved for innovative ideas, processes, materials and technologies that have significant potential to support lightweighting initiatives but have yet to be leveraged on a production vehicle platform. For this new category, the expert panel of judges has narrowed down the entries to the top finalists, but the winner will be chosen by MBS attendees through an online voting process.

“I’d like to thank all our nominees for their submissions and congratulate the finalists for the 2018 Altair Enlighten Award,” said Richard Yen, Senior Vice-President, Global Automotive and Industry Verticals Team of Altair. “We appreciate the innovative insights and experiences shared by participating Industry leaders’ through the award competitive process which help us progress towards our mutual objectives to achieve vehicle weight savings and CO₂ reduction in the automotive industry.”