Subaru, GM Win Edmunds.com Breakthrough Awards

Inside Line's parent company, Edmunds.com, is presenting Breakthrough Awards to Subaru and General Motors at the 2011 New York Auto Show. So what exactly have these automakers done to revolutionize the auto industry?

Well, GM is the recipient of our annual Green Car Breakthrough Award for the Voltec plug-in, series-parallel hybrid drivetrain in the Chevrolet Volt.

"Voltec is a game changer for the electric vehicle community and it offers a blueprint for commercial manufacturers to build upon as these types of vehicles continue to develop," said John O'Dell, our Green Car Advisor in chief. "Applied to a broader base of vehicles, Voltec and other automakers' versions of the extended-range plug-in hybrid technology can have a tremendous impact on U.S. fuel consumption."

The game-changing aspect of the Voltec drivetrain is that it takes a realistic approach to EV technology given our current lack of infrastructure to support these vehicles. Right now, true EVs put you on a very short leash -- if you forget to plug in at night, you're not driving in the morning. The Volt, on the other hand, offers limited EV functionality and drives like any other hybrid the rest of the time, and that's why the thinking behind the Voltec technology is right on. Last year, by the way, we gave this award to Coulomb and Better Place, two companies working on a recharging infrastructure for EVs and plug-ins. And we now recharge our long-term Volt on a Coulomb ChargePoint in our office garage.

Subaru, meanwhile, is receiving the Edmunds.com Marketing Breakthrough Award for its compelling marketing efforts in 2010. And those efforts translated to its biggest U.S. sales year ever.

What do we consider a marketing breakthrough? Well, it should be a vehicle, company or activity that created significant buzz, displayed out-of-the-box thinking, enhanced the positive perception of a brand and/or increased consumers' consideration of a brand.

Subaru launched various creative, and sometimes emotional ad campaigns in 2010, and sold 263,820 vehicles -- a 16 percent increase over 2009 (its previous best sales year). Not bad at all. Our favorite campaigns were the drily humorous "Mediocrity Sedan" and the tear-jerker (C'mon, tell me I'm not the only one) "Baby Driver."