A Ford Fusion on a Diet
Ford is currently on a roll with their new technologies, and they all have one objective in common: fuel economy, whether it is with the use of a smaller turbocharged drivetrain, like the EcoBoost engines, or by finding ways to diminish the vehicle's total weight, like they did with the all-new F-150.
The Ford Lightweight Concept takes those weight saving techniques, and basically pushes them to the extreme. The idea was to see what was possible if the engineers were free to experiment with various techniques, free of the constraints of a budget and mass production requirements. They had a very simple objective: take a mid-size Fusion sedan, and make it weigh as little as a sub-compact Fiesta!
The car had to be lightened by 363 kg (800 lbs) to pass this challenge. This was made possible by the use of exotic materials and the re-engineering of some parts: lots of structural elements are now made of aluminium or magnesium, the car now rolls on 17 inch carbon fiber wheels shod in 155/70 tires (slimmer, thus lighter), the brake discs are now cast in aluminium and covered in stainless steel, the back glass was replaced by a polycarbonate sheet, the bucket seats are made of carbon fiber, the engine was traded for a 3-cylinder EcoBoost mill out of a Fiesta... The list goes on. The final result is impressive: the concept has kept the same functionality, size and strength of the regular Fusion, but it is now 23% lighter.
Obviously, Ford doesn't plan on selling this Superleggera Fusion (costs would be ludicrously high), but it is interesting to see just how much weight can be stripped away when you try hard enough.
