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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Aluminum-body Ford F-150 revs up fuel economy

The Columbian
Published:

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. — Ford said its aluminum-bodied F-150 pickup will get as much as 29 percent better fuel economy than its mostly steel predecessor as the automaker gambles with a new design for its top-selling and most profitable model.

When equipped with a 2.7-liter EcoBoost engine, the truck has an estimated fuel economy of 26 miles per gallon on the highway and 19 in the city, said Raj Nair, Ford’s product-development chief. Production began earlier this month at Ford’s Rouge factory, and the new truck set to arrive in showrooms by the year’s end. The company has started shipping the trucks to dealers.

“I’m more impressed with the fact that they are shipping them already than the fuel economy,” said AutoPacific analyst Dave Sullivan. “With all of the concerns about producing an aluminum truck, that’s pretty impressive.”

Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields has said that efficiency is the most important feature for buyers of the Dearborn, Mich.-based company’s pickups. The truck sheds as much as 700 pounds to improve fuel economy, mostly by using aluminum instead of steel in its body. General Motors’ Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’s Ram pickups are mostly steel.

The best fuel economy for a Chevy Silverado with a 4.3-liter V-6 engine is 24 mpg on the highway, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The Ram pickup with a 3.6-liter V-6 gasoline engine has a maximum fuel economy of 25 mpg. GM’s 5.3-liter V-8 engine is still more efficient than Ford’s 5.0-liter V-8, with a 23 mpg combined city/highway fuel economy compared with 22 mpg, according to Ford.

“It’s a concern that GM still beats Ford V-8 to V-8, since the V-8 is still going to be 28 percent of Ford sales,” Sullivan said. “You have to wonder what the overall gain is going to be in the end.”

By cutting 700 pounds, Ford is able to lower the truck’s center of gravity and give a better driving dynamic, and make other improvements that will appeal to buyers, said Doug Scott, Ford’s truck marketing manager.

Ford raised prices on the new truck by 1.5 percent, or $395, on the base model XL, which starts at $26,615, and 7.9 percent, or $3,615, on the high-end King Ranch version that starts at $49,460.

The automaker doesn’t plan to offer a diesel F-150 version at this time, said Nair. The company offers diesel in heavier-duty versions of the pickup and plans to have a hybrid version this decade, he said.

Nair compared the new Ford pickup with the diesel Ram pickup, which gets as much as 28 miles per gallon on the highway and 23 combined. Based on the price of diesel fuel, operating a gasoline Ford pickup with 22 mpg city/highway combined fuel economy will be about $450 a year cheaper based on the higher price of diesel fuel at 23 mpg combined city/highway, he said.

To install new factory tools for the truck, Ford closed its two F-150 plants for 13 weeks this year, costing the automaker production of 90,000 of the profitable model. It will lose more production next year as it will take six weeks to convert its F-150 factory near Kansas City, Mo.

In 2013, Ford’s F-Series was the top-selling vehicle line in the U.S. for the 32nd consecutive year, with sales rising 18 percent to 763,402. That helped drive Ford’s North American pretax profit to a record $8.78 billion that year.

Ford told investors Sept. 29 that pretax profits this year will fall to $6 billion, short of its goal of $7 billion to $8 billion.

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