Sohu Auto Annual Award of 2009-2010

　　Preferred Car of the Year

　　Entry Criteria: Candidates in the “Preferred Car of the Year” series of selection must have made formal debut of their new models to the public in mainland from November 1, 2008 to October 31, 2009. (Note: Models only make changes in the configuration will not be included.)

　　Selection Criteria: The members in this year’s “Preferred Car of the Year” selection team come from the government, research institutions and the media. They will be divided into 9 groups in accordance with the classification of car models (micro car, small car, compact car, mid-sized car, large car, luxury car, sports car, MPV and SUV). Each will be judged in groups after a comprehensive consideration of six aspects, that is design, technology, power, market and environmental protection.

　　In the first phase, preliminary vote depends on the result of online voting and the top three models (27 models in total) with the highest votes in each group will enter the second phase of selection. In the second phase of re-election, public will form into a judging team to test cars and give assessments, while the panel of experts and online users will vote on the models respectively. Auto.sohu.com will value those votes according to the proportion that expert panel’s decision accounts for 30% with mass jury’s votes accounting for 30% and online users in charge of another 40% to determine various sub-awards. Finally, the model which gains the largest number of votes will be credited with the award of “Preferred Car of the Year”.

　　Selection Process:

　　Preliminary Election: From November 13 to November 31, all the new models will take part in the first online round and be voted by online users. In each group there will be three models that can stand out from the total 27 models. The winners of the first round are the nominees.

　　Re-election: From December 1 to December 20, the mass jury consisting of online users and the expert panel made up of specialists will be established. The mass jury will test nominees in 4S stores in Beijing and vote together with the panel of experts and online users.

　　“Preferred Car of the Year” will be finally unveiled on December 21.

　　Satisfactory Car of the Year

　　Entry Criteria: All the models in this selection process must be or to be in the market for sales before December 1, 2009.

　　Selection Criteria: “Satisfactory Car of the Year” series of selection takes full use of the advanced technological platform of Sohu.com. The platform can be regarded as a dynamic interactive survey system which is built for a host of online users. The survey will collect feedbacks from tens of thousands of online auto fans, and will ultimately serve the general Internet users.

　　Based on how the car operates in everyday use, users will write down the conditions of the model in the survey system according to the classifications ranging from exterior, interior, performance, maintenance service to other overall classifications. Sohu.com Auto Satisfaction Investigation System will collect the feedbacks. The final result will be worked out on the basis of the consumers’ feedbacks in one year, combined with the real data of complaints received by Sohu.com Automotive Quality Complaint Center. And then the statistics will undergo a process of weighted statistical calculations.

　　Selection Process: “Satisfactory Car of the Year” is accessible for all the Internet users and all the car models which are for sales.

　　Internet users only need to log on to the website of Sohu.com Auto Satisfaction survey, and fill in the satisfaction questionnaires before December 20. That marks the completion of the voting process on a certain model. (Translator: Qinghua/Sailor)

　　See original Chinese report Please click