The Ford F-150 pickup, perennially the largest-selling vehicle in the United States, will weigh about 700 pounds less beginning with 2014 models to drastically improve the truck’s fuel efficiency.
Details of the new F-150 are sketchy, but a recent report in the Wall Street Journal details the truck body will largely be constructed of aluminum not its current steel construction.
As a result, the F-150 will weigh about 15 percent less and will further accelerate the F-150 toward to the average 54.5 mpg gallon by 2025 mandate approved by the Obama Administration.
The weight reduction will increase the F-150’s miles per gallon fuel efficiency to meet 2020 fuel efficiency standards — a 25 percent mpg increase. According to Ford’s website, the most fuel efficient 2012 F-150 model gets 17 mpg in the city and 23 mpg on the highway.
In order to compensate for the change in material, the F-150 will also have a more “muscular design,” according to a Ford designer quoted anonymously in the same newspaper.”
The 12th and current generation of the F-150 debuted in 2009. The truck debut in 1948 and has been sold continuously since.
Article Last Updated: November 8, 2012.
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A sports, travel and business journalist for more than 45 years, James has written the new car review column The Weekly Driver since 2004.
In addition to founding this site in 2004, James writes a Sunday automotive column for The San Jose Mercury and East Bay Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., and monthly auto review and wellness columns for Gulfshore Business, a magazine in Southwest Florida.
An author and contributor to many newspapers, magazines and online publications, co-hosted The Weekly Driver Podcast from 2017 to 2024.
