Innovations Award Winner: 2015 Ford F-150 - Equipment World Magazine
The 2015 F-150 is a rolling example full of innovation, and its aluminum body is just one example of why it’s deserving of one of Equipment World’s 2015 Innovation awards. Twenty-some years ago a young automotive body structures engineer by the name of Bruno Barthelemy was part of a team at Ford tasked with building an aluminum-intensive vehicle (AIV) using the Mercury Sable as the test platform. It was an experiment to reduce the weight of vehicles, thus improving fuel economy and setting the stage to meet ever-increasing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. The AIV Sables did what was expected, but Ford deemed the cost of making mass-produced, aluminum-bodied, four-cylinder cars for the U. S. market outweighed the benefits at the time. “Our [team’s] job is to find innovative ways to design parts to reduce the weight and total cost of the part while maintaining or surpassing the strength requirements of the body structure,” said Dr. Barthelemy in 2006, by then Ford’s global chief... That opportunity came in 2008 when Ford Truck needed to start work on the next generation F-150. It was also the same time higher CAFE benchmarks for light-duty trucks was put into play. Source: www.equipmentworld.com
