Ford takes a gamble with its new lighter-weight F-Series pickup truck - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) (blog)
And speaking of gamblers, how about the gamble being taken by the Ford Motor Company. For the past 37 years, the company has made the nation's best-selling pickup truck in the country — the F-Series. It's been the nation's top selling vehicle for the past 32 years. For 2015, Ford has completely redesigned the F-Series, and is now using aluminum instead of steel in the truck's body, for a weight savings of about 700 pounds. I drove a new 2015 Ford F-150 4X2 decked out in Lariat "supercab" trim. That meant a set of mini-doors behind the passenger and driver doors, and small amount of storage space/seating area behind the front seats in the cab. The test model was powered by a 2. 7-liter V6 "Ecoboost" engine that produces 325 horsepower. And my mileage was not as good as average for the vehicle, according to Ford, which rates the Ecoboost engine at 26 miles per gallon on the highway and 19 mpg in the city, or 22 mpg in combined driving for the two-wheel-drive model. One of the reasons that this engine gets such good mileage might be disconcerting to some people: At stop lights and stop signs, the engine turns itself off to save gas. Ford says that the 2. 7-liter Ecoboost engine meets "theneeds of 90 percent of light-duty truck customers. For those people who use their F-Series trucks for real work, instead of just driving friends and family on wine-tasting tours (my duty last week), Ford says the 2015 model now can. Source: www.bizjournals.com
