Ford has announced that the 2015 Ford F-150 SuperCrew, or the four-door version of the vehicle, has received a safety rating of five stars from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Ford improved upon the four stars that the vehicle's predecessor, the 2014 version of the pickup, received from the agency. At four stars, the 2014 Ford F-150 was deemed safer compared to all other pickups in the United States market, except for the Chevrolet Silverado, which received a five-star rating last year.
The complete redesign of the F-150, which allowed Ford to improve on the pickup's safety rating, included the replacement of the vehicle's steel body components with all-aluminum ones to make the F-150 weigh lighter by hundreds of pounds. The change improved the vehicle's fuel economy and towing capacity.
Ford also included 31 new safety features for the F-150, including inflating rear seat belts during crashes, which function similarly to the way airbags do for front passengers.
The engineers of Ford focused on improving the front crush horn of the F-150, the part of the vehicle's frame that absorbs the force of a frontal collision. The role of the front crush horn is important in the safety of the vehicle because all the force that the component does not absorb will be transferred to the structures that surround the passengers, placing them at more risk.
The front crush horn, which formerly had a rectangular shape, was replaced with a cross-shaped one that provides the best balance between performance and weight. According to Ford, the patented 12-corner design of the cross-shaped front crush horn offers an improvement of 100 percent compared to the performance of the old front crush horn.
"We found that changing certain shapes led to a weight reduction, while also improving crash performance," said Matt Niesluchowski, Ford's truck safety manager.
Ironically, the effectiveness of the cross-shaped twin crush horn was due to adding weak points in strategic spots to ensure that the structure properly absorbs all incoming impact to prevent much damage to the F-150's frame.
A lower safety rating on the aluminum-bodied 2015 F-150 would have been disastrous for Ford, which invested millions of dollars into two plants for manufacturing the pickup with an aluminum body. With the five-star rating, Ford can finally silence critics that think an aluminum body will not be as effective in providing safety to its passengers compared to a steel one.
Ford has announced that the company will now also be manufacturing all the next generations of its heavy-duty pickup trucks with aluminum bodies.
