Starting today, Dutch organizations with promising innovations for the mobility sector can enter the competition for the Automotive Innovation Award 2024. Only innovations that make mobility smarter, cleaner, more efficient and/or safer are eligible for this coveted prize, which is awarded every two years and now for the fifth time. It is organized by the Automotive Innovation Award Foundation, a collaboration between the ANWB, BOVAG, LeasePlan, RAI Association, RAI Automotive Industry NL and Roland Berger. With the Automtive Innovation Award, the foundation aims to highlight the enormous innovative power of this sector in the Netherlands.
“The Netherlands has hundreds of companies, established players and newcomers, research institutes and other organizations that work every day on innovations to make mobility more sustainable, safer and more accessible. We should be pretty proud of that,” said jury chair Jan Peter Balkenende. “With these awards, we provide a stage where innovations, whether products, services or service technologies, can reach a large audience. I therefore call on all organizations in the automotive sector to send us their innovations.” Entries can be submitted through the foundation’s website until October 15, 2023. Finalists will be chosen from this pool by an expert jury. On February 5, 2024, exactly 7 months from now, the winners will be announced during the award ceremony.
Past winners
The first edition of the Automotive Innovation Award took place in 2015. That year’s winner was the online parking reservation platform Moby Park. Later winners have been TomTom, NXP and Dutch Green Carbon (in 2017) and Punch Powertrain, Monotch and Lightyear (in 2019). In the previous edition in 2021, PowerD (now: Groendus-PowerD) and Ebusco 3.0 walked away with the award. “The Automotive Innovation Award was a wonderful recognition of our approach and has opened many doors for us,” said Pieter Willems of Groendus-PowerD. “With our smart charging solutions, companies can charge their electric cars at the most effective times. This makes better use of green energy, maintains grid balance, and saves costs.”
Ebusco focuses on the development, production and market launch of 100% electric city and regional buses and on the ecosystems that support them. “As a young company, you have to work hard to convince investors of your plans,” explains Ebusco’s Peter Bijvelds. “The Automotive Innovation Award is the mobility industry’s recognition of our innovation power. That certainly helped us on our way to our IPO in October 2021.”
Four awards up for grabs
Which innovations will make mobility safer, more sustainable and more accessible (in other words, more affordable and available) for everyone? This question is the central theme for the Automotive Innovation Award 2024. For the first time, entries will compete for awards in the categories sustainability, safety and accessibility. The fourth award is the grand prize.
The judging process
Submissions for the Automotive Innovation Award 2024 are now open until October 15, 2023 at www.automotiveinnovationaward.nl. An independent expert jury led by Jan Peter Balkenende will assess the entries on innovativeness, impact and implementation. For each award, the jury will nominate no more than five innovations to proceed to the next round. The nominees will then be invited to present their innovations to the jury. Three of the five nominees will advance to the finals. The winners of the Automotive Innovation Award 2024 will be announced at the exclusive “Automotive Innovation Dinner” on February 5, 2024.
