The future looks good for aluminum as a material for American pickup trucks. Despite its obvious drawbacks – harder to repair than steel, requiring special techniques and tools, as well as incurring higher costs, Ford has still gone ahead and made as much of its new F-150 (pictured) out of the metal as possible.
However, none of that shows in the optimism with which this The Detroit News report announces that seven out of each ten pickups manufactured by 2025 will ditch steel and go for an aluminum body.
They quote the results of a study carried out by Ducker Worldwide, at the request of the Aluminum Transportation Group “a promoter for the research and use of aluminum.”
The reason behind the shift is obviously the lower weight of the material; vehicle efficiency increases by around 1-2 percent for every 100 lbs (45 kg) shed.
Furthermore, the amount of aluminum used in each vehicle will go up too. The per-vehicle average for 2013 in North America was 350 lbs (~160 kg) and it’s expected rise to 550 lbs (~250 kg) by 2025.
The demand for aluminum is expected to soar in the next decade – it’s projected to go up by as much as 20 times, from 200 million lbs to an estimated 4 billion lbs.
By Andrei Nedelea
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