Ford’s Weight-Saving Game Plan Focuses on Metals, Not Plastics

Ford Motor Co. is targeting use of thinner-gauge, high-strength steels as a primary strategy to reduce weight of vehicles currently under design, Shawn Morgans, body structure technical leader, told Design News in an exclusive interview.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our head man is from the aircraft industry and he doesn’t understand why our vehicles aren’t lighter already,” said Morgans. He was referring to Alan Mulally, who became chief executive officer of Ford in 2006 after a 37-year career at Boeing, going from engineer to executive vice president. Mulllay was involved in the game-changing decision to go to all-composite aircraft bodies at Boeing.

Ford has already cut weight from the 2008 Ford Focus and the Ford Explorer through use of structural adhesives to improve rigidity while also allowing lighter steels. Weight of the Focus was reduced by 3.7 lbs. Use of the adhesives allowed Ford to also reduce the number of spot welds in the Focus, “but the emphasis from here on will be to reduce the gauge of the steel,” said Morgans.

He said that Ford has been a leader in recent years in increasing the use of aluminum and magnesium to reduce weight. That strategy will broaden in the next two to three years, he said.

Example: Two thirds of the 2008 Focus fleet will be equipped with aluminum wheels, saving 22 lbs per vehicle.

Ford is also planning increased use of aluminum for hoods and in lift gates. Morgans said that more than half of Ford vehicles already have aluminum hoods.

Ford expects greater use of high-strength composites in front-end applications, Morgans said, but there are no plans to introduce dramatic new plastic technologies such as carbon-fiber reinforced composites. They’re too expensive right now, said Morgans. There are also technical problems with much-discussed efforts to make roofs out of polycarbonate. Scratch and weathering problems still have to be resolved, said Morgans.

Morgans also wants producers to make improvements to sheet molding compound, which Ford has used significantly for body and truck bed applications in shorter production-run vehicles.

“The weight savings weren’t where we thought they should be,” Morgans told Design News. “There would have to be further technical developments in that area before we would consider it a true weight-saving strategy.”

His comments are ironic because SMC producers made a major pitch at the Detroit Auto Show in January for their materials as weight cutters.