2016 Detroit Auto Show: Ford unveils EcoBoost engine for aluminium-bodied F-150 Raptor

Ford Motor Co. announced at the 2016 Detroit auto show that it's adding the off-roading edition of the F-150 pickup truck - the F-150 Raptor - to its stable of aluminum-bodied pickups.

That means all of Ford's North American pickups will be built with steel frames and aluminum bodies, something that, until two years ago, was reserved for sports cars.

Peter Frise, a mechanical engineer and the scientific director at AUTO21, an automotive research think-tank at the University of Windsor, said the great advantage of aluminum is its relatively light weight, but it's difficult to use in a mass produced setting.

"Cars have been made with aluminum parts for many years, decades," Frise explained. "What Ford managed to do is find a way to make a large portion of a mass-marketed vehicle out of aluminum. They make about 800,000 F-150s a year. It's not a low-production, high-cost sports car or race car; it's a mass-market vehicle."

The F-series pickup is the engine behind Ford's sales. The company claims it's been the best-selling pickup in Canada for 50 years. More than 780,000 F-series trucks were sold in the U.S. last year, meaning that about one in every three Ford vehicles sold in the U.S. was an F-series pickup in 2015.

Frise said the reason the company switched to aluminum bodies was to meet tougher North American, government-mandated fuel economy standards coming by 2025. "To burn less fuel, a vehicle needs a lot of new technologies," he said. "One of them is that it must be lighter." Ford reports the F-150 shed about 350 kg - about 770 pounds - during the switch from steel bodies to aluminum.

"It's about more than aluminum, it's about being the strongest, toughest, most capable truck,"explained Jerry Farrell, the engineer responsible for the F-150 program. "Aluminum made us lighter and more durable without sacrificing anything."

Andreas Schamel, Director of Powertrain Research and Advanced Engineering, supported Farrell's view saying an engine with less than three cylinders would have too many compromises, but cylinder deactivation in a three-cylinder engine would improve the economy without trade-offs in performance.

The advancement of weight reduction has been achieved with the revised engine block, cylinder head, connecting rods, front cover and oil pan. The new block weighs 40 per cent lesser due to the use of new materials, design and assembly techniques. The cylinder head is partly constructed from carbon fibre making it 15 per cent lighter while the connecting rods are forged aluminium. The use of carbon fibre extends to injection-moulded front cover and oil pan.

All of these changes have also resulted in a reduction in the NVH levels. The American manufacturer claims the above changes improve the efficiency and emission levels by around 4.5 per cent.