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Ford Rolls the Dice With Breakthrough F-150 Aluminum Pickup Truck
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "USA Today reports that Ford's next F-150 pickup truck will be made mostly of aluminum, instead of steel, in a bid to save weight. It will likely either be hailed as a breakthrough product to buyers who've made F-150 the bedrock of its business or one that draws comparisons to a 'rolling beer can.' The automaker has asked Alcoa, which makes aluminum blast shields for battlefield-bound vehicles, to lend some of its military-grade metal for the automaker's display, according to people familiar with Ford's plans. Ford's sales job will be considerable: The company is eager to demonstrate the toughness of aluminum, which is lighter than steel, to pickup buyers at next month's Detroit auto show. 'This is already the most significant debut at the auto show,' says Joe Langley. 'Everybody's going to be dissecting that thing for a long time, especially since Ford will be taking such a big gamble.' As a transformative product with a potentially troublesome introduction, the new F-150 has drawn comparisons with Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliner — an aircraft developed under the company's commercial airplane chief at the time, Alan Mulally, who in 2006 became Ford's chief executive officer. Because of the complicated switch to aluminum from steel in the F-150's body, IHS Automotive estimates Ford will need to take about six weeks of downtime at each of its two U.S. truck plants to retool and swap out robots and machinery. Ford is apparently trying to squeeze more than 700 pounds out of its next generation of pickup trucks. Using aluminum to cut weight would help meet rising fuel economy standards in the United States, which is requiring a fleetwide average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025."
http://www.aluminiumleader.com/en/around/transport/cars
http://www.drivers.com/article/245/
http://www.audiworld.com/news/02/aluminum/content1.shtml
and I don't think they made this much of a fuss about it.
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
Land Rover.
One could consider buying a smaller car, and only renting when you need to haul something. For most pick-up truck owners, that gives a cheaper, more comfortable ride.
I'll note that my truck has a synthetic 'plastic' bed, it works great, and is probably as tough as a rhinoliner coated steel bed. I'm sure it saves weight/cost.
The failure mechanics of aluminum is different than steel, but it is possible for it to be stronger for the weight. As a bonus, you shouldn't have nearly the rust problems. As usual, I'd be leery of buying the first year's model.
I'm still holding out for my strong hybrid truck though.
I don't read AC A human right
Most people care more about the status symbol of the new shiney, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it used in a series of Dodge/Chevy ads. "Silverado, tough as steel" or some such.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
While other manufactures have made aluminum for vehicles for a while even this is an old story. Ford announced over a year ago that the next gen F150 was going to be aluminum. The previous announcement stated that it would add about $1500 to the cost of materials. Also this isn't ford's first time working with aluminum bodied vehicles as they have previously experimented with aluminum bodied Tauruses as well as producing aluminum bodied Jaguars.
Time to offend someone
Galvanic corrosion. I'm interested in how they are handling that with so many steel aluminum interfaces.
Wasn't there talk of an aluminum shortage earlier this year?
Or was it just speculation that Goldman Sachs tried to create a shortage to increase prices?
Harald
http://www.caranddriver.com/news/2013-land-rover-range-rover-photos-and-info-news
Is apparently more than 900lbs lighter. IHMO Ford aren't really trying that hard to reduce the weight.
True pickups are body on frame rather than unibody. "Toughness" isn't going to be a problem. And certainly critical components (A- B- C-pillars) won't be aluminium -- the trend is towards ultra-high-strength steels. And Ford is experienced with aluminium anyway; they already use a lot of aluminium for things like hoods and liftgates and such. Not to mention they probably still have all of the Jaguar IP for welding, riveting, and clinching aluminum.
A six week downtime is a bitch, but spot welding aluminium is kind of a bitch, too, and so there are probably going to be a lot of changes in the body manufacturing facilities.
Achieving 18 mpg in my Expedition (not a daily driver, by the way) is going to seem pretty low after the new F150 comes out, I suppose. Pity we can't get an aluminium Expedition.
This will work fine. The issues will arise in the driveline. Specifically the rear axle. Clearly gears, diff and drive shaft will still be steel aloy. But if they try for an aluminum pumpkin and axle tubes it's going to fail. The frame isn't a big deal because they can beef that up as much as they want and the load is fairly predictable (strait down) But lots of people have tried aluminum rear axles and they just don't work in the kind of conditions a work truck operates under.
I can tell that both the designers and people who think this is a great idea don't actually use a pickup for a living. I use a pickup on a ranch, and I use it HARD so that is where I am coming from. The new pickups in the last 10 years just don't last anymore because they are making them lighter and more economical to drive, and they just can't take the abuse that workers put them through on a daily bases.
So what exactly is the mileage after this?
Of course they do. On the other hand I haven't heard of the F150 on battlefields while Land Rovers have had a lot of military use. Of course they are "for work".
The less weight means less momentum. Can't count how many times I've been tailgated by some a-hole "country boy" who thinks he owns the road just because he can shine his headlights directly into your rear-view mirror. Guys who drive these trucks are menaces.
Yeah, I'm generalizing.
The truck should be made available in an "unpainted" version. Remember the main reason for paint on steel-bodied cars is rust-prevention, but aluminum is strongly resistant to rust in most places (probably not close to an ocean, however), and should not need either the paint job or the associated weight of dried paint.
They didn't just have one guy say "hey, let's switch everything over to aluminum and see what happens". They had engineers work on it, they reviewed the costs, forecasted the risks and expected benefits, etc. They know what they are doing. There is little if anything left to chance on this. Most likely they did a number of aluminum prototypes and ran them around on the proving grounds with aluminum versions of existing body panels so as to not draw additional attention.
Big companies like Ford don't just do things like this on a whim, they can't afford to. The American car companies still have the black eye of their quality problems from the 80s and 90s; they are one misstep away from corporate ruin. While the F150 is still the top selling vehicle on the planet, they can't afford to take it for granted or to leave its fate to chance.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
That's just staggering, that this is the most popular vehicle in the USA. It's about the same size/weight as a European 8-seater minibus! And this isn't at all the biggest Ford sell, is it? I've seen things on the motorway there that are almost bus sized.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
It's impossible. Great for dealerships though as you will be required to have all the 'work' done by them, and by 'work' we mean large scale replacement of body panels replete with specialized welding equipment that none of the slacktards know how to use.
I can tell that both the designers and people who think this is a great idea don't actually use a pickup for a living. I use a pickup on a ranch, and I use it HARD so that is where I am coming from. The new pickups in the last 10 years just don't last anymore because they are making them lighter and more economical to drive, and they just can't take the abuse that workers put them through on a daily bases.
Independent studies place the F150 basically equal (depending on which metric) in durability with the Silverado 1500 and Ram 1500. If you are wearing out your trucks it might be time you look in to the 250 (or higher) series. The 150 series trucks from each of the manufacturers are designed to match their usual working demands - most people who buy them live in the city and drive them mostly on the road. The most common cargo (in this country especially) in the bed of a pickup is air.
The 150 trucks are designed mostly for the urban handyman who occasionally pulls around and launches his own fishing boat on the weekend. They're good trucks but don't try to overstate their purpose.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I can just see you parking your truck overnight in, say, NYC only to find it stripped of the body panels in the morning....
This is going to play in the midwest about as well as if the government suddenly decided to outlaw beef. F-150's/Silverado's/Sierra's/Ram's are basically standard issue for men aged 18-55 in the midwest, and the commercials are right, F-150's dominate. Chevy/GMC/Dodge are going to have a field day with this.
The fact that Ford is jumping into this with the F-150 too, and not testing it out on a lesser model first, is just staggering.
Aluminum *does* corrode. In most situations the oxides form a stable protective layer, but in situations where aluminum is in contact with dissimilar metal you can get galvanic action and the less noble metal will corrode. There's also a phenomenon called stress corrosion cracking where a metal in a corrosive environment can fail catastrophically after being repeatedly exposed to stress.
So a piece of structural aluminum near a fastener in a salty environment isn't safe from corrosion failure. Naturally I'd assume Ford is on top of this, and you'd have nothing to fear from your new aluminum truck. How safe it would be after a ten or fifteen years of being driven hard over New England roads is something that I wouldn't be altogether sure of. Again I'm sure the engineers have taken this into account, engineers are fallible so we'll have to wait and see.
Steel really is an amazing material, both strong and tough. It tends to fail in benign ways (bending rather than breaking), which also contributes to the safety of a steel vehicle. When steel is damaged it is easy to repair. My wife has had a couple incidents with her car and a certain steel beam in the garage at work. When it happens we replace the passenger side doors and have our mechanic beat the door pillar back into shape with big hammer. I'm not sure an aluminum vehicle could be repaired this way.
So as a geek I'm delighted Ford is trying something new. But there are good reasons nobody's attempted this before. I'm hoping it's a brilliant success, but we won't be sure until the vehicles have been on the road for a few years.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If it's done right (probably not) this is what trucks need to be. Rust is one of the biggest killers of working trucks so a well-built aluminum truck would be a godsend. .0 version.
But as Firethorn said, skip the
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
The F150 has been the best selling vehicle in America for decades, so it takes a lot of guts, or a lot of motivation to do something radical with it. I'm guessing that Ford isn't doing this out of public-spiritedness, but because they anticipate higher fuel prices some time in the next few years.
Of course comparing gasoline prices to global production is a bit like comparing weather to climate; there are factors in play which swamp the long term trends -- over the short term. Still I've seen some predictions that gasoline will hit $6/gallon in the next five years from it's current level of $3.65/gallon. If that prediction is even remotely true, then even if the new truck is plagued with problems it'll be a winner. And eventually crude prices are going to send gas prices that way.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I really hope that Ford over designs that truck since unlike steel, aluminum has no fatigue limit. And for those of you who don't know what a fatigue limit is, with some metals, they bend under stress and when the stress is removed, return to their original shape. And if the amount of bending is under their fatigue limit, then that bending process can happen an infinite number of times and no harm is done. However, if the stress is over the fatigue limit, then eventually, the metal will crack and fail. Steel has a fatigue limit, aluminum does not.
So both materials have their advantages and disadvantages.
Steel. It corrodes fairly easily, but has a good fatigue limit. So if you keep it from rusting, it will pretty much last forever.
Aluminum, doesn't corrode, but doesn't have a fatigue limit. So eventually, it's going to fail. No matter what you do, it will eventually fail. But the length of time until it fails can be extended by minimizing flex by using more material than what is strictly needed to handle the load. Or if you don't use excess material, inspect it frequently for fatigue cracks, and if any are found, repair them. On aircraft, they do have a strict inspection schedule and frankly, a lot of the inspection process involves crack finding via dye penetrant and X-ray. Somehow, I don't think such an inspection process would be done with a Ford F150. And I worry that Ford just might not bother to overbuild that truck since doing so will make it more expensive and heavier. I instead suspect that they would design it to last maybe 5 years or so under "typical use" until the frame starts to crack. A "reasonable" service life and guaranteed obsolescence.
So...how many cans do I need to recycle to get a free truck?
nobody who buys a new car cares if it will last longer than some other car. They're going to buy a replacement vehicle in 3 or 4 years anyways.
Ford is a work truck
not this one. most 'work trucks' are fleet vehicles and as a fleet vehicle the 650 and proloader see far more use as ambulances and bucket trucks than the 150. due to previously commented fatigue issues in aluminumized substrates and the body designs untested history in a fleet role, you'd hate to have one of these because its wreaks havock on your bare-chassis configuration (the majority of new-fleet sales.)
ford used jaguar and land rover as a testing ground
if your intended to analyze theoretical optimizations to the speed at which one could pedal a formerly successful brand into the ground. ford jerry rigged parts from the taurus and crown victoria into their jaguar market to stave off cost overruns and paid dearly by trying to enhance markup in ways customers wouldnt notice. what they learned from the land rover was that rich people were only slightly more forgiving of shit-tier gas mileage than poor people in the pursuit of their rugged outdoorsman lifestyle image. the 2003 land rover discovery got 13 combined MPG. the 2011? just 14. and thats with all their aluminum advantage.
no. i predict this new f150 is quite unline the dreamliner in that its vaporware. the future truck is designed to gin up the first quarter of 2014 and get target audiences motivated by crossover mileage and SUV manliness to start thinking about a truck that was championed not for its innovation, but its resale ability to independent conractors hauling sheet rock in the back, a cell phone in one hand and a coffee in the other across town trying to track down raul so they can get the other tub of PVC cement for tomorrows plumbing work.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I would contend that African safaris where you hunt inside of tall fences over water tanks and feed dispensers is for posers. Having no Jeeps present is evidence that they are not for posers.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
...Vehicles made with non-traditional body parts are more easily modified into time machines.
"Aluminum is a perfectly sound material as long as it's used correctly."
Exactly, so the question is which aluminum alloy are they using. Wikipedia's list is a good place to start on your choices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_alloy
The upcoming F-150 will push Ford's pickups closer to a 30 mpg highway rating
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/article/20131223/OEM04/312239954/ford-rolls-dice-with-aluminum-f-150#ixzz2ogVVCODu
Yes, I read that part, but... "closer to a 30 mpg highway rating" is meaningless, and contains no data. If they improve by another half a mile per tank of gas, they would technically be "closer" and the statement would be true.
I want to know "how much closer", preferably with a comparison to an otherwise identical steel vehicle, so we can see what a truck intended to haul heavy loads gets in terms of mileage from using soft aluminum instead of solid steel for its construction.
The 1948 Land Rover had an aluminium body and so has all of it's direct "descendants" up to the current Land Rover Defender.
I don't know why people here see fit to "correct" stuff they don't know about.
I think Porsche might want to argue against your quote about "being handled in a gentle manner" with the Al engine block on their GT3. It's been their most successful racing car engine for years and is bulletproof as far as those things go. In no way will the truck engine exceed the strains of a racing engine designed to run at high compression at 5-8.4K for hours on end. As far as strain - the truck has an automatic transmission which is easier on the engine, and puts out less HP and torque perdisplacement, lower compression, etc.
Of course there will be a few problems as there always are with something new, but to blame in on AL will be foolish. Hell, they even have had Al DIESEL engine blocks for a while.
..........FULL STOP.
Aluminium doesn't like to flex much and it's quite stiff, the move from a chromoly bike frame to an aluminium one left my butt hurt for weeks.
I have little faith in the American automotive manufacturers to do this correctly.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A semi-ridiculous idea.
It takes 200 million BTU equivalent of eletcricity to refine a ton of aluminum.
That's about the equivalent of 1,800 gallons of gasoline.
If using aluminum for the truck body ups the efficiency by 5 MPG, that would save 200 gallons for every 100,000 miles driven.
So you're still about 1,300 gallons in the hole.
A bad idea.
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-pickup-truck-2013-11
They get four years before it's mostly useless.
I bolted a G.I. can full of gas out behind the right rear wheel of my F-150.
I'd have made a lot better time down Grizzly Peak Drive if it weren't for those slugs on the Ducatis who couldn't get out of my way.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/02/25/henry-ford-hemp-plastic-car-stronger/
Does Ford think their pickup truck clientele is going to have their masculinity threatened with plastic bodies made of weed?
instead of welds, as well as plastic panels. while Chrysler engineers invented epoxy in the 30s, nobody has used it in production vehicles to hold the big parts together.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
No one hauls a half ton of cinder bocks in a land rover.
Nor do most people who own F150s. Most merely like to imagine themselves hauling stuff even though most demonstrably do not.
The F150 is for work.
Even Ford knows that isn't true. Most pickups are never taken off road, rarely if ever tow anything, and most aren't used to haul anything that couldn't be transported in an SUV of similar size. Most F150s are sold as primary transportation to people who really don't need them for that purpose.
Significant steel components will have to be bolted to the aluminum body, and since bean-counters still rule the US automotive world, whatever galvanic corrosion barrier they slap on will just barely get through the warranty period (and it wouldn't surprise if the warranty period/mileage is lowered or has a buried caveat about said specific corrosion), these will be used vehicles to avoid like the plague (or like Panteras or Vegas).
Exactly: diesel. Fuck hybdrids. A good diesel has relatively low emissions, will produce better MPG than a Prius (e.g. http://www.carpages.co.uk/guide/skoda/skoda-octavia-estate-s-1.6-tdi-cr.asp [carpages.co.uk]), and doesn't have cart around a heavy battery.
No, it has to carry around a very heavy engine instead. Diesels are great and I'm a big fan of diesels but hybrids (can) have demonstrably lower emissions, are capable of better fuel economy per horsepower, can be designed to use zero oil based fuels for commuting 10-40 miles, have even better torque characteristics than the already impressive diesels, and have other advantages besides. While I would happily buy a diesel, the long term prospects for hybrids are much brighter.
What I would like to see is large trucks using diesel-electric hybrids similar to those used in locomotives. I think that would be a huge win for fuel economy and pollution reduction.
I normally don't reply to myself, but I saw this right after I posted:
(250cc? not sure any more)
That should read 250ci (cubic inch).
They still want a large towing capacity.
Aluminum land rover bodies are a mainstay in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia because they don't corrode like steel bodies. Of course they are used with toyota/denso drive lines. Nobody uses land rover engines.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
There are a gazillion people driving pickups that never leave city streets. They're pretty much a status symbol, especially among young men...huge super duty trucks with upsized tires that rarely leave the road. I've even seen ones with ultra-low-profile tires on massive rims.
If it's being used for real work I have no problems...but I think it's a waste of resources to drive a massive vehicle around for daily commuting in the city.
Wouldn't it be easier to remove one passenger seat?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Elektron is a magnesium alloy.
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(the term from Snow Crash)
Use google or wikipedia to find out about the Land Rover that has been aluminium since 1948. It's a very different thing to the luxury Range Rover which probably has a steel body.