IMPACT Phase II - Study to Remove 25% of the Weight from a Pick-up Truck

This paper describes a joint project between Ford, the American Iron & Steel Institute, the University of Louisville, and the U. S. Army to reduce the weight of a full size pick-up truck by 25%, while keeping incremental costs to a minimum. Several alternate technologies were evaluated for each system, subsystem, and component of the vehicle and based on analysis of all combinations of these technologies, the solution which yielded the best overall cost and weight balance, while meeting all of the functional requirements, was selected. The major focus of the project was to develop new steel architectures and materials, since this would assure the maintenance of the lowest possible cost, though the study was not restricted to steel alone. The project was successful in meeting all of its targets, and a vehicle was built to demonstrate the feasibility of the various concepts. The goal to keep steel as the material of choice was also realized as the percentage of the vehicle that was steel was maintained. Most importantly over 60% of the individual technologies were implemented on Ford vehicles, with even higher percentages possible with implementation on future vehicles.

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See papers presented at SAE World Congress & Exhibition, April 2007, Detroit, MI, USA, Session: Achieving Lightweight Vehicles (Part 1 of 2)

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