Cooper Standard announced it earned an Automotive Innovation Award from the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) for its Thermoplastic BEV (battery electric vehicle) Thermal Management Solution supplied to the 2023 General Motors Co. Cadillac Lyriq.

Cooper Standard was recognized during the 51^st annual Automotive Innovation Awards Gala, held Nov. 2 in Livonia, Mich. The event is the oldest and largest recognition event (established in 1970) in the automotive and plastics industries.

“This is a notable honor for Cooper Standard, as the Company continues to evolve for the future of mobility and meet the needs of our customers,” said Tom Stimson, VP, engineering & product development, Cooper Standard. “Our Thermoplastic BEV Thermal Management Solution is a great example of the impactful evolution Cooper Standard is creating. Congratulations to our dedicated employees who contributed to this outstanding achievement.”

Cooper Standard’s Thermoplastic BEV Thermal Management Solution was honored in the Materials category. The solution involves two developments that provide a lightweight, thermoplastic solution for BEV thermal management systems, according to the company. The two developments are:

• Cooper Standard’s PlastiCool 2000 multilayer tubing for glycol applications that reach 120°C, which provides excellent chemical resistance, 25% better permeation resistance and 60% lower weight than EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer). It is available in smooth, convoluted, round and non-round configurations.

• Ergo-Lock+ connectors, which are designed to meet the growing demands of diverse powertrains. Ergo-Lock+ provides performance and product feature enhancements – flexibility, visual and scannable latch verification, and reduced insertion forces by more than 30% (versus traditional VDA connectors). The system’s modularity permits hundreds of connector configurations to be produced from a standard set of molded subcomponents at lower total cost.

The SPE Automotive Innovation Awards program honors the best companies in automotive plastics. Category and Grand Award winners were selected from a group of finalists by a group of journalists, academics, and retired industry chief engineers.

To view the full list of winners, visit: https://speautomotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/IAGGuide22_Winners.pdf