Sustainable Product
The Sustainable Product category recognizes production vehicle (or major system module) embracing emissions reduction, lightweighting, material circularity and safety advances.
Great Minds Think Light: The Altair Enlighten Award
The automotive industry's only award dedicated to lightweighting and sustainability celebrates a decade of innovation.
The Altair Enlighten Award honors the greatest sustainability and lightweighting advancements that successfully reduce carbon footprint, mitigate water and energy consumption, and leverage material reuse and recycling efforts. An award that garners interest from industry, engineering, policymakers, educators, students, and the public alike, the Enlighten Award showcases the latest and greatest technology innovations dedicated to sustainability.
The Altair Enlighten Award is presented annually in conjunction with the Center for Automotive Research (CAR). This year's Award will be presented on August 1, 2023.
Our Timeline
Award Categories
Sustainable Process
The Sustainable Process category recognizes process enabling emission reduction, material reuse/recycling and water conservation advances during manufacturing or engineering phases.
Module Lightweighting
The Module Lightweighting category recognizes mass reduction of a vehicle module, subsystem or component.
Enabling Technology
The Enabling Technology category recognizes Technology advancement that enables vehicle lightweighting including a material, production process, design method, or joining technology.
Future of Lightweighting
The Future of Lightweighting category recognizes process, material or technology that is not yet in production, but has significant potential to advance vehicle lightweighting. This category is open to incubator and startup companies, small-medium sized businesses, research and development institutions, universities and entrepreneurs.
NEW! Responsible AI
New category in 2023! The Responsible AI category recognizes advancements in Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) deployment throughout the automotive value chain – from design, engineering, operation, production, and in-service. Responsible AI is defined as the practice of designing, developing, and deploying AI with good intention to empower employees, businesses, and people, while also fairly impacting the environment and wider society.
2022 Altair Enlighten Award Winners
Every organization that wins the Enlighten Award joins a distinguished, trailblazing club. Last year's winners - Ford, Toyota, BASF, L&L Products, Shiloh Industries, General Motors, McMaster University, and Nemak – are among the latest organizations to showcase the future of vehicle lightweighting and sustainability.
You can see a complete list of previous winners here.
Interested in the 2023 Altair Enlighten Award?
Download Entry FormPast Participants
“Altair is very well known, and this is a very well known award. We are very excited about the business impact. When I looked at the competitors for it, there were some amazing technologies that were included as well, so we expect this will help spread the word for what we are doing.”
– Craig Renneker | VP, Driveline Product Engineering, AAM -
“Taking the Altair Enlighten Award in the full vehicle category for the Portofino BIW is a fantastic result for Ferrari.”
– Michael Leiters | CTO, Ferrari -
“The Enlighten Award is extremely important to Ford Motor Company. This award is going to strengthen us - it shows that we are really a player in this field.”
– Donna Dickson | Chief Program Engineer, Mustang Mach-E, Ford Motor Company -
“Our entire development team is honored to receive this coveted award.”
– JP Flaharty | Executive Program Manager at Toyota Motor North America Research & Development -
Our Partners
Highlighting the organizations who make the Enlighten Award possible.
Our 2022 Judges
Judging is conducted by an independent panel of judges, led by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR). CAR chairs the group of recognized industry experts to select the winning entries in all the categories.
Carla Bailo
Center for Automotive Research (CAR)
Harvey Bell
University of Michigan
Brian Brothers
Altair
Josh Brugeman
Fresh Coast Climate Solutions
Brian Daugherty
Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association
Ryan Gehm
Truck & Off-Highway Engineering Magazine, SAE International
Dr. Deborah Mielewski
Ford Motor Company
Gina Oliver
American Chemistry Council
Dr. Wolfgang Seeliger
Leichtbau BW GmbH
Chris Theodore
Theodore & Associates,
Automotive Industry Consulting
Dr. Frank Zhao
Tsinghua University