Cadillac ATS and Tesla Model S make final five in Innovation By Design Award's 'Transportation' category

Cadillac's ATS and the Tesla Model S are among the five finalists bidding to win the ‘Transportation' category at this year's Innovation by Design Awards, which celebrates groundbreaking designs from the past year.

Established last year by design magazine Fast Company, the awards consist of eight different categories – 2D Design, Products, Interactive Experience, Transportation, Spaces, Social Good, Concepts and Student Design – and this year saw over 1,200 submissions from all over the world, from corporations all the way down to individuals' designs.

After a jury of 24 experts from all design disciplines – including J Mays, Ford's vice president of design and chief creative officer – whittled them down to just 54 designs, the Cadillac ATS and the Tesla Model S are battling for their category award against three other designs from 2013. They are: the NASA Mars Curiosity Rover, Scoot Networks' shared network for Vespa-like scooters in San Francisco, the Uber data-driven app for on-demand town-car service and #UseMeLeaveMe, a fleet of GPS-equipped bikes that tweet their location.

The Cadillac ATS was hailed by judges as a sports sedan that marked the rejuvenation of an old, uninteresting brand. Fast Company's Mark Wilson said in a review of the ATS earlier this year Cadillac had "found direction after decades of being lost on the map" and that "for the first time in 40 years, Cadillac has discovered what a Cadillac should be".

Tesla's Model S, the first all-electric sports car, is the only other car design to make the final five, for its revolutionary, accessible design and safety testing record.

The Innovation by Design Awards ceremony takes place at the end of the Innovation By Design Conference, which seeks to bring together the world's best designers and design-minded business leaders to explore ‘The Business Impact of Good Design'.

The winners of each category will be announced at the Innovation By Design Awards on 2 October in New York City, USA.

To check out the full list of finalists, visit the Innovation Design Awards' official website.

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By Rufus Thompson