An antidote to fat, heavy cars? Check out these lightweighting awards.

Thin sound deadening

The Enabling Technology prize went to CompositeEdge GmbH and ATA Mute BV for a new kind of sound deadening. Less than a millimeter thick, the material absorbs up to 97 percent of sound, particularly the low frequencies that engineers want to keep out of the cockpit.

Geely and Syensqo's clever stator cooling system took the Module Lightweighting prize. The Model PPA stator cooling system uses plastic instead of metal, reducing its cost by 36 percent and its mass by 47 percent compared to a metal version.

Marelli's adhesive wastewater recovery process won the award for Sustainable Process. Many car parts are glued together rather than riveted, screwed, or bolted, and the robots and spray guns that apply those bonding agents need to be cleaned. Marelli's system uses a three-part chemical agent to separate adhesive waste from the cleaning water. Eighty-five percent of the cleaning water can be recovered and reused (for non-potable uses), reducing Marelli's water consumption by thousands of liters.

The Sustainable Product award goes to Nio and AkzoNobel for a new coating applied to the bottom plate of a battery pack. Nio is one of the few EV makers to have swappable battery packs, and this new coating lasts three times longer (now 15 years) while being 90 percent thinner than the one it replaces. That saves 4.9 lbs (2.2 kg) per pack while also replacing a non-recyclable material that gave off volatile organic compounds with one that can be recycled and does not off-gas. The new coating has been in use since 2024 in Nio, Onvo, and Firefly EVs.