Detroit 2008: EyesOn Design Awards favor Cadillac

One bit of news we passed over on the way out the door of COBO Hall on Tuesday was the winners of this year's EyesOn Design Awards at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show. There are four awards given away each year, including Best Concept and Production Car and Best Concept and Production Truck. Cadillac sweeped the car side of things with the CTS-V being honored as Best Production Car and the CTS Coupe Concept named as the Best Concept Car. The BMW X6, meanwhile, was named Best Production Truck and the Chrysler ecoVoyager Concept nabbed the Best Concept Truck award.

The EyesOn Design awards are sponsored by the Detroit Institute of Opthamology and judged by a panel of automotive designers including ex-VP of Design for GM Wayne Cherry, Chrysler's Senior VP of Design Trevor Creed, the renowned Henrik Fisker, GM's VP of Global Design Ed Welburn and Mazda's Franz von Holzhausen.

© Source: autoblog
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2008 Chrysler ecoVoyager Concept

At the 2008 Detroit auto show, Chrysler rolled out three concepts, each pairing exciting design and glimpse-of-the-future features with environmental friendliness.

This modular electric/lithium-ion technology that all three employ is being developed by Chrysler's new ENV1, an in-house organization at the company that's focused around developing electric-drive vehicles and advanced-propulsion technologies.

The Chrysler ecoVoyager concept is a sleek, rounded one-box design - looking like a low-sling crossover vehicle - that's said to celebrate the "romance of automobile travel embodied in a four-door, four-passenger distinctively American design." Chrysler design chief Trevor Creed named elegance, simplicity, and serenity as design priorities. With an overall length of about 191 inches and width of 75.2 inches, its footprint is similar to that of a mid-size four-door sedan.

A 200 kW (268-hp) motor system would drive the wheels and power the ecoVoyager with enough gusto to reach 60 mph in 8.8 seconds and go on to a top speed of 115 mph. Regenerative braking would recapture energy lost in braking or decelerating, increasing efficiency. Range from the battery system would be about 40 miles, while total range of the hydrogen fuel cell system in combination would be about 300 miles.

© Source: thecarconnection
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