You’re not the only one who resolved to lose weight in 2015. One of America’s most iconic pick-up trucks, the Ford F-150, also went on a diet … dropping hundreds of pounds to improve fuel economy and reduce carbon pollution.

PhotoDriving the change are new federal fuel efficiency standards, which call for light-duty vehicles to average at least 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025.

So to get a jump-start, Ford gave the F-150 a makeover. With a military-grade aluminum alloy body, the 2015 model can weigh 700 pounds less than last year’s steel truck, and is up to 20 percent more fuel-efficient.

It’s light, but Ford says it’s just as tough. That’s important to Tim Kingsbury, the first person to buy one of the redesigned trucks:

Kingsbury: “I will drive it to football games in Lubbock, Texas, and that’s about a six-and-a-half-hour drive either way, and you can run into some wildlife on the highway there, and so I feel very secure in my truck because I know that it can handle anything that I might run into.”

By putting the F-150 on the road to sustainability, Ford is showing consumers that you don’t need to sacrifice toughness to care for the earth.

Photo of Ford's F150

Reporting credit: ChavoBart Digital Media.
Photo source: Ford website (screen capture).

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Lisa Palmer is a freelance journalist and a fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, SESYNC, in Annapolis, Md. Her writing covers the environment, energy, food security, agriculture,...