Saturday, July 28, 2012

Turn in your Coke cans - The Truth About Cars has an interesting report that Ford is planning on building a new generation of trucks with a mostly aluminum body.  They would be more difficult to manufacture (steel plates are moved with magnets on the assembly line) but they could be 700 pounds lighter, which means better gas mileage.  Another fear is hurting the F-150 brand by "building a truck for sissies."

2 comments:

Tregonsee said...

Or as they are also referred to, architects. :)

AndyN said...

I'm not a metallurgist, but what I remember from researching when I bought my first race bike was that aluminum doesn't bend, it cracks. Little dents that can be worked out of a steel frame tube (or body panel) can't simply be un-bent on a similar aluminum piece. What you save in fuel costs will be lost in repairing even the most minor fender bender.