Open the vehicle door and climb into the driver’s seat. Grasp the steering wheel and reach for the shift lever.
Does it all fall to hand, or is something not quite right?
“Good ergonomics are never noticed,” says Cary Diehl, “but bad ergonomics always are.”
Diehl is an ergonomics engineer with the Ford Motor Company, and he recently spent time with automotive students at the Clayton Caroll Automotive Centre at SAIT Polytechnic in Calgary. An all-new 2015 Ford F-150 pickup truck was the focus as Diehl described his efforts in making the truck work the way customers expect a truck to work.
“Hopefully, the presentation allows students to see all of the thought and detail that goes into any new vehicle,” Diehl says. “I’m just one engineer who worked on the project – there were many others. This was a full-time job for four years, with plenty of 60-plus hour (work) weeks involved.
“In the end, we’re really proud of this vehicle.”
Ford Motor Company ergonomics engineer Cary Diehl speaks to SAIT Polytechnic students about his role in developing the all-new 2015 Ford F-150.
Handout, Ford
That’s because the perennially popular F-150 has been redesigned from bumper to bumper for 2015. More than a redesign, the automaker would prefer to call it a reinvention.
The F-150 has become lighter thanks to military-grade aluminum alloys used in the body panels, and has shed 318 kg overall. Ford says the truck, with more high-strength steel used in the construction of the fully-boxed ladder frame, is tougher than ever, and further claims it’s also the smartest and most capable F-150 to leave the factory.
There’s a lineup of four engines available to power the F-150, including a 2.7L EcoBoost V6 featuring auto start-stop that Ford says should deliver the same power as some mid-range V8s. There’s also a 3.5L EcoBoost, a 3.5L V6 and a 5.0L V8.
As a small example of Diehl’s design involvement, he spoke to me about seeking input from truck owners about what kind of information they want and need to see in the eight-inch display between the speedometer and the tachometer.
“Truck customers want vehicle information front and centre in their cluster,” Diehl says. “They said they didn’t need audio information there.”
This type of feedback led to Ford’s MyView productivity screen customization.
Because each customer uses the truck differently, the importance of specific features can vary, Diehl says. For example, Ford thinks of the truck as the “multi-tool” of vehicles. Some owners haul landscaping gear, while others tow horse trailers or go off-roading. That kind of variety of use makes it difficult for engineers to determine the most essential information to include in the instrument cluster.
Ford’s solution is MyView, which gives truck customers the ability to sort and organize their top seven favourite gauges in the cluster on the 2015 F-150’s eight-inch screen. With the click of a single button, drivers can shift between individual tire pressure, trailer information, off-road mode or trip fuel economy – whatever they need to know.
SAIT student Rick Frayn is currently working at Universal Ford, and is nearing completion of Ford’s Automotive Student Service Educational Training (ASSET) program. ASSET offers automotive students the opportunity to alternate between hands-on-learning at SAIT and on-the-job training at a Ford dealership.
Of meeting Diehl and listening to his presentation about the F-150, Frayn says, “It was great to learn about how much thought goes into building a vehicle. It’s not just, ‘This is cool, we should put it in there.’ They (the engineers) make it work better, and the technology is more an aid than a nuisance.”
Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Have an auto related item to share for the column or What’s Next? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or gregwilliams@shaw.ca. Visit his website at gregwilliams.ca.
