Ford To Bolster Roofs

[ANTAUS]

LINK-Detroit News

[Ovaltine]

LINK-Detroit News

 

Imagine THAT! Making the roof strong enough to not crush in on a rollover!

 

I guess the Volvo engineers won THAT one, eh? :shades:

 

Or was it Alan and Mark (?!?!) telling 'em to do the RIGHT thing?

 

Any insight, anyone?

 

-Ovaltine

[bec5150]

I dunno. 2.5 times the weight of the car seems like overkill, even for a Volvo. I am a motorcycle rider so I am more into the "prevention by training" train of thought and hate driving around in vehicles that have 600 pounds worth of safety equipment. I guess it's all for the best but when I see stuff like this all I see is WEIGHT!!

[Michael Reynolds]

Imagine THAT! Making the roof strong enough to not crush in on a rollover!

 

I guess the Volvo engineers won THAT one, eh? :shades:

 

Or was it Alan and Mark (?!?!) telling 'em to do the RIGHT thing?

 

Any insight, anyone?

 

-Ovaltine

 

Well I wouldnt make this a Ford issue alone, it is an industry wide issue. I didnt see anyone else jumping to follow Volvo after the brand institued boron.

[old_fairmont_wagon]

2.5 times the weight of the car seems about right for the outlyer cases in a standard deviation of crash and rollover result probability. Makes sense when you consider a vehicle loosing control near an overpass, rolling over, and then having a heavier SUV wind up following it and ending up on top of the first overturned vehicle.

 

Like I said, an extreme case, but, one that is possible and one that I have personally seen the end results of in real life (suburban on top of an overturned old camry wagon, results were not pretty for the occupants of the wagon, one of which was apparently attempting to exit the vehicle through a window when the suburban rolled over on it.)

 

There's a rather impactful photo on the net that shows a volvo V70 wagon (or its immediate numeric predecessor) with a semi laying on top of it that looks to have been easily survivable for the ocupants of the Volvo.

 

So, in general, I find that figure to be a good figure to use for both marketing and liability purposes.

[RAdams]

Even in a "standard" rollover I'd imagine the dynamic loading of the roof structure could pretty easily hit 2.5 times the weight of the car, if only for a short period and if only in ceretain areas. In a multiple-impact scenario as you described above, the sky's the limit.

 

I remember being too young to drive and going to the South Florida Auto Show and seeing what I thought was the coolest thing at the time: Volvo had a display outside with a sedan (a 740, I believe) with 5 or 6 MORE sedans stacked on top of it. They would periodically open and close the doors to show that the structure had not deformed.

[ZanatWork]

Yesirree, nothing like giving top-heavy brutes even MORE mass above the beltline!

 

Hopefully, they find a way to do it with better bracing designs more than adding weight to the already corpulent.

[Ovaltine]

Good news! It looks like you can have strong AND light (or normal) weight using Boron and other high strength steels.

 

The pages below describe that while high strength steel does the job and keeps the weight down,

it is a challenge to form. So a "hot stamping" process has been created, and the pieces are cooled in the molds.

 

Interesting stuff!

 

 

Web pages about Boron steel use:

 

http://www.wielanderschill.co.uk/html/boronsteel.htm

 

http://www.thefabricator.com/MetalsMateria...cle.cfm?ID=1440

 

http://www.thefabricator.com/PressTechnolo...cle.cfm?ID=1343

 

 

-Ovaltine

[Roadrunner]

But won't that just drive the prices up?

[Ovaltine]

But won't that just drive the prices up?

I'd like to bet that some Poindexter finally did the math and realized that a fraction of the money saved in prevented *lawsuit* damages could easily cover the added expense.

 

Check this link out: http://www.yourlawyer.com/topics/overview/...plorer_rollover

 

It references just 2 cases that put together total nearly $60 MILLION in award damages.

 

Yep.... me thinks that a little Boron steel in the mix will be money WELL spent!

 

-Ovaltine

[Roadrunner]

I'd like to bet that some Poindexter finally did the math and realized that a fraction of the money saved in prevented *lawsuit* damages could easily cover the added expense.

 

I was speaking about the cost to the consumer to purchase the vehicle.

[Mark B. Morrow]

I was speaking about the cost to the consumer to purchase the vehicle.

 

 

Ultimately, the cost of lawsuits is reflected in the price of the car to the consumer. The money has to come from someplace.

 

Does anyone else remember the Volvo ad from the 1970s where they stacked 4 or 5 Volvos on top of each other? I tried to find the picture but haven't come across it.

Edited December 7, 2006 by Mark B. Morrow

[Ovaltine]

I was speaking about the cost to the consumer to purchase the vehicle.

 

Ultimately, the cost of lawsuits is reflected in the price of the car to the consumer. The money has to come from someplace.

 

THANK YOU, Mark! You see the *big* picture, and how everything fits together.

 

Mark-> <- RR

 

The material cost will have to come out of the profit-per-vehicle allowance, BUT... the money saved on legal counsel, bad press, lawsuit damages, etc. will MORE than pay for the lost profits.

 

I'm not trying to bust on you too hard, RR, but at the high-end corporate level *I* assume that the analysts (once in a Blue Moon) get a rare flash of clarity and inspiration and understand the semi-complex costing relationships described above. I also assume that they (sometimes) make a rational manufacturing decision based on that info. Somewhere, someone finally realized that $60+ million dollars (lawsuit payouts) buys a whole HELLUVA lot of boron steel!!!!!

 

-Ovaltine

Edited December 7, 2006 by Ovaltine

[DCK]

I commend Ford for this.

 

 

Safety sells and not mentioning the fact that it is the right thing to do.

 

I don't get people who say this is overkill.................doesn't make anysort of sense, 2.5 can easily be reached in a standard rollover especially at high speeds.

 

Ford is doing a great thing here, anyone who thinks this is overkill simply doesn't make sense. Ford needs to start leading instead of always following and this is a good step.

[Mark B. Morrow]

THANK YOU, Mark! You see the *big* picture, and how everything fits together.

 

Mark-> <- RR

 

The material cost will have to come out of the profit-per-vehicle allowance, BUT... the money saved on legal counsel, bad press, lawsuit damages, etc. will MORE than pay for the lost profits.

 

I'm not trying to bust on you too hard, RR, but at the high-end corporate level *I* assume that the analysts (once in a Blue Moon) get a rare flash of clarity and inspiration and understand the semi-complex costing relationships described above. I also assume that they (sometimes) make a rational manufacturing decision based on that info. Somewhere, someone finally realized that $60+ million dollars (lawsuit payouts) buys a whole HELLUVA lot of boron steel!!!!!

 

-Ovaltine

 

 

I have a little backround that formed that opinion. For 8 years most of my work was as a Plaintiff's lawyer involving Products Liability cases. We did several truck tire and rim claims and automotive design cases. I did a GM seat belt defect case and one involving the liftgate latch on a Plymouth Voyager. In reviewing thousands of documents and deposing engineers, I was amazed by how little it would have cost to eliminate these problems.

 

Many of the experts used in these trials are former employees at these companies who fought for improvements and were overrulled by the bean counters. The savings of pennies over millions of vehicles does add up. As Chrysler found these savings are wiped out by the cost of a recall campaign not to mention the millions in litigation costs and verdicts. Add to those costs the bad publicity that comes from the notariety of building an unsafe car and you have made much of your advertising worthless. I remember Inside Edition ran dozens of shows on the Chrysler minivan cases and oddly enough some had Chrysler commercials running between the breaks.

 

One of my first cases involved the Firestone RH5 split rim truck wheel designed in the late 1940s. These were blowing apart and killing service techs and causing accidents on the road from the start. There were actual letters where the execs did the math and concluded that the cost of settling claims was acceptable as a cost of doing business. They continued to make the wheel through the early '70s after single piece wheels had long been available. It was only after the costs of settling the suits began to eat up all the profits that the wheel was discontinued. When the Japanese (Bridgestone) bought Firestone, they were stunned by how the business had been run. Bridgestone got stuck with the cost of many of the suits.

 

I believe that generally, the climate has improved. Ford did a better job of getting out in front of the Firestone/Explorer mess. Not as good as it could have been, but much improved over the past practice of denying everything. I am also hopeful that more of the Volvo ethic will continue to rub off on Ford. It would have been advisable for Ford to have included the side airbags in the Fusion/Milan/Zephyr from the get go. They seem to have learned with the Edge/MKX. Maybe the engineers should ask WWVD? What Would Volvo Do?