Gadgetory

let's face it we hear about lightweight technology in the auto industry all the time but for most car buyers it doesn't really print but what lightweight is all about is everything that a vehicle is all about better performance better fuel efficiency which leads to lower emissions and better handling dynamics in every direction the vehicle goes committed to this ethnic is the coming Ford GT 600 plus horsepower from a turbo v6 mounted in the middle on an aluminum subframe behind a carbon fiber centered tub driving the rear wheels to be honest that architecture has been done before and you can buy a 700 horsepower Dodge Challenger for 60 grand so what's really going on here it's how the new GT will seek performance by burdening itself less lighter weight and less envelope the vehicle's physical outline it's the essential story of this car now Raj this is such a big effort got a car with incredible performance but it's got less weight less bulk right so high performance you know now is a lot about efficiencies if you look at our latest f-150 all aluminum body we took more than 700 pounds out of that vehicle and there all the attributes get better when you take weight out improve your fuel efficiency we can soften up the suspension the ride gets better so it all feeds on itself some of the parts we're seeing that you're also displaying here have a lot of carbon reinforced plastics things that were exotic and used in small volumes you're seeing this is a high-volume technique to make a lot of parts in affordable cars well we can use performance vehicles to prove out some technologies and then bring it to high volume iterate the designs take those learnings and bring it to high-volume mainstream manufacturing so what used to be went on Sunday sell on Monday is now lightweight on Sunday absolutely for the engineer it's it's win on Sunday and then take that and mainstream on Monday how important is it to use carbon-fiber versus aluminum carbon fibers lighter and it's strong and as a designer what it does is give me greater flexibility to create unique forms that I can't create in steel and aluminium one of these flying buttresses are one that you point out why couldn't you have made those flying buttresses out of aluminum we hear that all the time we couldn't have done that in the metal steel or aluminium needs to be pressed it needs to have you need to have a die and it's press then you have maximum draw depth and then you have radiuses which which are really restricting based on your maximum depth of draw it would tear or be too thick there will be too thin I wouldn't get the draw depth between between this point and this point yeah in a tool one of the first things you notice is you come back like so is this thing it's real narrow real fast in fact you could reach across and touch the other glass it's three key factors in creating the ultimate performance call one is lightweight second is aerodynamics it has a really really tapered cabin it's really narrow at the cabin and it allows us also to manage the air flow much better than on a traditional full volume car this tapering here helps the wind to see less car yes as it's coming yes we would normally think the face is kind of where it all red so a normal car you would fill out this volume that you'd ever because this would be here but imagine how much that's a foot that's yeah on each time which I'm not pushing through the air we're managing the air flow to direct it straight on to the arrow devices like the rear which is it and we hear so much about lightweight of products but it's also like footprint the rage in supercars these days has been hybrid Porsches 918 is laferrari in the McLaren p1 but to stay light and lean Ford skip the added motor big battery in the inverter that would have meant weight and volume to put somewhere less under the skin means less skin to move through the air main reasons we chose this engine is it is compact it's one of our you know mainstream engines yes it's got a little bit you know few of the components a little bit more exotic a little more at the foundations of this car are the same that's in your f-150 and it allows us to shrink wrap all this body around this engine it also produces high power over 600 horsepower from this engine it's also fuel efficient if we didn't need the extra 2 cylinders why did why do we need to put them on if they added weight and they added the fuel consumption yeah as I look at it here I see these buttresses come back and they seem to almost be supporting these these pods over the rear wheels what's in there is an intercooler there's a vent it's a grill on the front grille is it's an intercooler and radiator the air feeds through the butchers so it's not just that so that's your bleed off to go in easy and 1/2 feet since that's your intake run yes so we exhaust the air through the middle of the Lambs these engineering ideas created great aesthetic design ideas you know it's a it's a beautiful looking thing yeah right but it's also clever and innovative and in it and that balance between looking amazing but also delivering a clever solution is what this car is all about now lightweight technologies do have some hurdles they tend to be exotic in terms of rapid workflow and production they tend to be more expensive right now as we've heard about some of the carbon fiber technologies and let's face it the auto industry is one that is known for inertia doing things the way it's done things although that's changing quite a bit lately still the GTS wholesale light weighting approach is a leading-edge look at what is and will increasingly happen to mainstream cars light weighting is no longer optional or limited to cars in the stratosphere like this it makes every motion a car accomplishes better and does it with less energy for cars driven CNET style standing by now at CNET on cars.com click on the road