It has been four years since Ford introduced a redesigned F-150 pickup that had shed hundreds of pounds over the previous truck. And now, at the 2018 Detroit auto show, General Motors is doing the same, using a much different road map to lose those pounds.
While Ford turned to an aluminum-intensive body and structure, underpinned by a high-strength steel frame, GM followed what it terms a mixed-materials strategy.
That meant considering mass at every single step of the way in designing these trucks, chief engineer Tim Asoklis told C/D at an official introduction of the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500, just before the kickoff of the Detroit show. ?When you go down this path, there?s no one silver bullet,” he said. “It?s a combination of, from bumper to bumper, looking at every single element and asking, ?How do I optimize it"? ?We took a real surgical approach.?
Using this rather sports-car-like strategy?which is now being applied throughout GM?s vehicle-development process?the team managed to cut 88 pounds from the body and another 88 from the frame. Anything that slams is aluminum?the hood, the doors, and the incredibly light-feeling, easy-closing tailgate (with available power closing)?while the body structure is all steel.
Patches Are Good
The frame is built of high-strength steel and was modeled with computer-aided design (CAD) to be strategically thicker only where it?s needed for loading, via tailor-rolled blanks and other methods?achieving a 10 percen...