Newsweek’s 2025 Auto Disruptor Awards Honors the Best of What’s Next

Automotive leaders and innovators from around the globe gathered at One World Trade Center on Tuesday to celebrate Newsweek‘s fourth annual World’s Greatest Auto Disruptors awards.

“Being an auto visionary means pushing harder and faster,” Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Cunningham, who presented this year’s winners, said during her opening remarks.

Michael Schiebe, the chairman of the board of management for Mercedes-AMG GmbH and the head of Mercedes-Benz G-Class and Mercedes Maybach, was named this year’s recipient of the Visionary Disruptor of the Year. His fresh, high-risk vision has pushed the Mercedes brands he oversees into competition with top luxury brands, with AMG rivaling Ferrari and Lamborghini and Maybach moving into Rolls-Royce territory.

In his video acceptance, Schiebe said his efforts to overhaul AMG began about two years ago, when he and his leadership team “realized AMG can do even better” and began “an attack plan” that allowed the brand to break its own records on the track and make bold product decisions.

The auto visionary said that as he prepares to take AMG to the next level, he is keeping in mind four guiding principles: “An AMG needs to be bold. It needs to make you smile when you look at it. It needs to give you goosebumps when you take a seat behind a steering wheel and it needs to make your heart race faster when you drive it.”

Newsweek also named RJ Scaringe, the CEO and founder of Rivian, the 2025 Executive Disruptor of the Year on Tuesday.

Accepting his award live from Newsweek‘s headquarters, Scaringe said, “We’ve been working so hard as a company, in so many different ways,” including decisions that have allowed Rivian to create “products about inspiring and enabling people to go live wildly adventurous lives with our vehicles.”

Scaringe isn’t only leading and establishing an electric vehicle company against massive headwinds, but he’s also ensuring its survival by inking major deals with brands like Volkswagen Group and by securing significant federal funding that has allowed Rivian to build a new factory in Georgia.

“Newsweek was thrilled to welcome the boldest auto innovators to our global headquarters at One World Trade,” Dev Pragad, CEO of Newsweek, said. “For the fourth year in a row, our World’s Greatest Auto Disruptors event celebrated auto manufacturers, teams and executives who are successfully disrupting the global automotive industry. We were delighted to honor the winners and look forward to seeing how each will push the industry ahead this year.”

Newsweek‘s 2025 World’s Greatest Auto Disruptors also honored brands like Volvo, which won Designer Disruptor of the Year; Bentley Motors, which won Community Disruptor of the Year; and Kia, which won Sustainability Disruptor of the Year.

Russell Datz accepted the word on Volvo’s behalf. In his remarks, Datz, who serves as the head of media relations for Volvo Car USA, celebrated the brand’s 70 years in the U.S.

“Who would have ever thought, not too long ago, that Volvo would be respected for design,” Datz said.

Wayne Bruce, the chief communications and DEI officer of Bentley Motors Ltd, and Michael Rocco, president and CEO of Bentley Americas, appeared at Tuesday’s event on behalf of the British automaker to accept the first-ever Community Disruptor of the Year award.

“It’s a true honor for us,” Bruce said. “This goes to all of our thousands of colleagues back in Crewe, a lovely town in the Northwest of England.”

The awards presentation was also attended by Kaoru Kumasegawa, head of Kia Global’s Brand Strategy Group; Andrew Roberts, vice president and head of global PR of Kia Global; and Dan Keefe, vice president of Innocean and head of brand for Kia.

Kia has been extended the company’s sustainability efforts worldwide through its active partnership with The Ocean Cleanup. The brand was recognized for using its knowledge to understand how trash can be used as part of a circular sustainability ecosystem for future automobiles.

“We partnered with them for a very simple reason: As car manufacturers, we’re not really super knowledgeable about how to become a little bit more sustainable and this project is really more learning, of mindset change in our organization more than reusing plastic in the cars,” Kumasegawa said.

“The sincerity of the team back in Korea, trying to understand the issues, how to solve the issues,” he said, adding, “It’s still a learning process, we’re still maybe halfway through, but thank you for acknowledging.”

Also recognized on Tuesday were Porsche, which won Powertrain Disruptor of the Year for its T-Hybrid system, and Ford, which was recognized as the Marketing Disruptor of the Year for its Bronco Off-Roadeo driving adventure.

In a video speech, Timo Resch, president and CEO of Porsche Cars North America, said, “Hybrids are a really big part of the story and the history of Porsche.”

He said that when Porsche’s engineering team had to come up with “the next generation” of hybrid vehicles, the company was able to use all of its previous experiences to create the T-Hybrid system, which “takes the emotion of the existing internal combustion engine six-cylinder that we all love in the 911 and adds that special element of electric propulsion to it that makes it so unique.”

Will Ford, general manager of Ford Performance, accepted the award on behalf of Ford. He said in a video acceptance that when his family’s company reintroduced the Ford Bronco in 2020, it was important for them to distinguish the vehicle from the rest of the market.

“It wasn’t just enough to be better off-road,” Ford said. “A lot of the people that we talked to while we were developing Bronco said they liked the idea of off-roading but the first hurdle was that they didn’t know where to start.”

He said that was why the American automaker created a community for owners to learn about off-roading. Ford has hosted over 65,000 owners and their guests at its off-road playgrounds. Last year, the company opened a fifth location in Tennessee, “putting a Bronco Off-Roadeo within 500 miles of 80 percent of all Bronco customers.”

Mercedez-Benz was also named Research and Development Disruptor of the Year for its Project Electric G-Class and Technology Disruptor of the Year for its Future Technologies lab.

“When we started developing the Electric G-Class, we wanted to develop a real G-Class with 100 percent off-road capability,” Nikola Cavic, the team leader of Electric Drive Train, said in a video that was prerecorded for Tuesday’s event. “So, we went for a special concept with four individually-powered electric motors and a two-speed gear box in every electric motor.”

“After hours and hours of testing, we knew that we did the right decisions and saw what our concept is capable of,” he said.

Cavic accepted the Research and Development Disruptor of the Year award alongside Michel Knoeller, head of Product Division Off-Road Vehicles and managing director Mercedes-Benz G GmbH.

Ulf Zillig, head of Group Research, Sustainability and RD Functions, accepted the Technology Disruptor of the Year award, saying, “On behalf of my whole team, we are deeply grateful for this recognition.”

“At Mercedes-Benz, we believe that innovation is the key to shaping the next chapter of the automotive industry,” he said in a video speech. “Our commitment to research and sustainability drives us to explore new horizons and develop technologies that will redefine the automotive industry.”

This year, Mercedes opened is Future Technologies lab to members of the media to showcase its next set of innovations, from its use of paint that serves as a car-sized solar panel to its more durable bio-based materials and its use of neuromorphic computing to make safety technology smarter. The company’s innovation, both its pace and level of variety, are unmatched, and no other automaker has done so as publicly as Mercedes.

“Together we can drive innovation and shape the future of mobility,” Zillig said.

Tadge Juechter, the former executive chief engineer of Chevrolet Corvette, was also awarded Legacy of Disruption on Tuesday for his nearly five decades at General Motors. Juechter, who retired earlier this year, won critical acclaim as the Grandfather of the Corvette.

“Tadge is extremely grateful for this award,” General Motors’ Sabin Blake said as he accepted the ward on Juechter’s behalf. “On behalf of General Motors, we thank Tadge for his legacy.”

Quoting Juechter, Blake said, “This award doesn’t happen often inside large companies. It also is rare that large companies choose to disrupt themselves. Even rarer, that they do it and they do it successfully.”