Yahoo Autos Here Are Autoweek’s 2024 Vanguard Award Winners
So much has changed in the last year. What many of us thought our automotive future would look like from a 2023 perspective has shifted—a lot.
And no, it’s not like anyone believed the Age of Jetsons was right around the corner. But with post-COVID electric vehicle adoption rates as high as they were, and automakers responding by investing millions in EV production infrastructure, no one should have been faulted with expecting sales of electric vehicles to continue on a steady, upward trajectory.
Thing is, they haven’t.
Growth in demand for EVs has slowed markedly this year. There is now significantly less likelihood the US will hit the White House’s goal of 50% of new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030.
The beauty of the Autoweek Vanguard Awards, however, is that they are designed to highlight and commend the people and companies working hard to bring to fruition the future of the automotive landscape—whatever that future is and however we get there.
When the tides invariably shift, you’ll find there are those that have predicted the redirection, prepared for it. Our job here is to recognize and celebrate them for their forethought and dedication toward bringing the future one step closer to our driveways.
Realizing the Future
The Autoweek Vanguard Awards stand alone in a sea of annual automotive accolades by focusing on that future rather than simply recognizing past work, as is the case with most “Of the Year” type of awards.
The Autoweek Vanguard Awards goal is to honor the people, entities, and developments that put at the center the possibility of mobility five or 10 years down the road, and then does whatever it takes to get us there.
And with that, here are our 2024 Autoweek Vanguard Award winners.
Vanguard Award, Company
Toyota Motor Company
Vanguard Award, Person
William Clay Ford Jr.
Vanguard Award, Vehicle
2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV
Vanguard Award, Technology
Waymo
Vanguard Award, Company
Toyota—excelling at playing the long game.
Perhaps it’s noteworthy that this year’s Vanguard Award, Company, is going to an automaker specifically for building vehicles with internal-combustion engines, but part of what makes these awards unique is that they are, by their very design, aiming at a moving target: lauding those who are building the future. And sometimes it’s the winding road that brings us there.
Just a few years ago, when a stampede of automakers were making declarations promising all-EV lineups within a decade or two, Toyota didn’t buckle to either peer pressure or media scrutiny and stuck to its guns, leaning on its over-quarter-century of experience building hybrids to instead focus on the Prius-ification of its portfolio. The idea is a simple one: baby steps.
Today, while other automakers are backpedaling on their promises or plying a sort of historical revisionism, Toyota is doubling down on its promise to keep pursuing the greening of its lineup at its own pace, moved by the market forces instead of fads.
Vanguard Award, Person
William Clay Ford Jr.—a future-of-mobility champion.
It’s been so easy for us here in Detroit to get caught up in the hype of Michigan Central Station’s resurrection. Sure, Ford spent $1 billion to restore the towering carcass of a once proud train station that had become the poster child of the voyeuristic pastime known as “ruin porn.” But outside our pleasant peninsula, who the heck cares?
The more important story lies in all those rooms upstairs at the station…and in the building next door…and in the sprawling neighborhood surrounding Michigan Central. Bill Ford Jr. has helped to build a whole ecosystem devoted to nurturing the development of mobility solutions, and you rarely see a big blue oval anywhere.
The 30-acre campus houses not only spaces for Ford engineers to work on next-generation EVs, but over 100 startups also call the campus home, allowing for all sorts of collaborations and cross-pollinations between stakeholders. A commendable move by a man whose name adorns all the cars his company makes to invest in what others are doing for the future of mobility.
Vanguard Award, Technology
Waymo—perhaps not quite ready for prime time, but getting closer.
Operating since 2009, Waymo is doing over 50,000 paid rides a week with relatively few problems, which means potential revenues over $50 million this year, with an average fare of $20 per ride. And to those for whom financials—quarterly earnings reports, cash burn rates, etc.—are the bottom line, those numbers are attractive.
But the Vanguard Awards are much more focused on the long term, in how what Waymo is doing today will affect what we’re driving—or is driving us—tomorrow.
Making mobility safer is the goal, and Waymo's “peer-reviewed research” found that their vehicles were involved in 0.4 collisions with injuries per million miles driven, compared to 2.78 for human drivers. Waymo also claims to have a 57% lower rate of police-reported crashes than human drivers.
And recently, Waymo rolled out its sixth-generation hardware set that not only simplifies the technology that makes the autonomous thing work, it cut costs by a significant margin. Whether you or I believe that our near future includes AVs running around in every city, Waymo certainly does, and is moving speedily toward making that future a reality.
Vanguard Award, Vehicle
2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV—the slow march to bringing EVs to the masses.
Price. That’s the biggest driver behind this year’s Vanguard Award, Vehicle. While others will look to performance, styling, or technology as primary motivators for award conferral, EV development has reached a point that puts the sticker price at the forefront.
The importance of bringing EV technology down market can’t be overstated. If the impetus for moving away from internal combustion toward more sustainable energy sources is the preservation of the environment (as well as a reduction of our dependence on foreign fuel supplies), it’s not something that can be achieved by selling $100K electric pickups and 2.0-second 0-60 mph super-EVs.
General Motors has finally brought its high-tech, modular Ultium platform to the near-entry-level, with a sticker starting under $35,000 and that offers 319 miles on a charge.