As major companies continue to compete for bottom line numbers, Ford looks to the future with their first Aluminum Body built vehicle.
As Paul Sancya reports “The first 2015 Ford F-150 rolled off the assembly line this week, and it is no normal truck. The new F-150 pickup is the first with an aluminum body, making it hundreds of pounds lighter than its predecessors.”
“Ford says that the new body cuts about 700 pounds off the weight of the truck, without sacrificing any capability. But the company isn’t willing to talk much about the most important reason for this redesign — what kind of miles per gallon the thing gets.
Bragman says that Ford’s move to aluminum is one of the biggest gambles in the auto industry in years. Will customers who identify with the slogan “Built Ford Tough” want a lighter body truck? Other questions loom large, says Bragman.
“How the truck is used by customers, how the truck is recycled at the end of its life, how it’s repaired, how it’s insured, will it cost more to actually have it repaired?” says Bragman. “There’s still a lot of questions that we haven’t quite gotten the answers to, that we’re not going to know until the truck really starts to get in consumers’ hands.”
Article written by Paul Sancya featured on NPR. You can view the article HERE
