Ford Fathom on Track: Universal EV Production Comes to Life at Louisville Assembly Plant (LAP)

[Maverstang]

Still curious as to how all these pieces come together to make a solid crash structure. You've got the "chassis" made up of a front rear and center sections that all get bolted together. But that leaves you with a skateboard that you then have to bolt the door frames and roof to later. Seems like at the firewall and behind the rear doors are going to be intersections of bolts holding different parts of the truck together.

No skateboard… the three sections are self contained and bolt together near the end of assembly. There’s a video on the hidden Ford site that shows the “marriage” of the front and center sections on one side. Basically two overlapping blades come together and a bunch of beefy bolts go in to hold them together.

Model flexibility comes from changing the sections, not changing a top hat on a skateboard. For example, the back section could be a pickup bed or an enclosed wagon. The middle section could be stretched for a 3 row or van. Note the sheet metal will be different for different models, so it comes as a finished product, you won’t be able to change sections in the field.

 

[ScooterAsheville]

I would imagine they supplement the bolts with structural adhesives. I think one of the videos even showed a bead of adhesive being laid down at the join?

People don't respect modern structural adhesives enough. Structural adhesives are widely used across the automotive and aerospace industry. In many cases, they're far superior to rivets, welds, and bolts. But usually these technologies are used together for redundancy and to combine the strengths of each. In some cases, adhesives are a mandatory join technology because of galvanic corrosion (and other failure modes).

https://permabond.com/industries_served/automotive-adhesive/

I first learned about the magic of adhesives in my aviation career, touring factories and maintenance depots, and talking to the techs and engineers designing/making/maintaining the fleet.

 

[thum]

Still curious as to how all these pieces come together to make a solid crash structure. You've got the "chassis" made up of a front rear and center sections that all get bolted together. But that leaves you with a skateboard that you then have to bolt the door frames and roof to later. Seems like at the firewall and behind the rear doors are going to be intersections of bolts holding different parts of the truck together.

Roof and pillars are part of the central casting. Other fords currently produced are dozens of pieces welded and bolted together to make the frame. All they are doing here is reducing it from dozens of pieces to 3.

The only concern is that it’s cast aluminum vs rolled/stamped steel. But that is the way that most of the auto market appears to be going.

 

[Maverstang]

The only concern is that it’s cast aluminum vs rolled/stamped steel. But that is the way that most of the auto market appears to be going.

They really have no choice but to use aluminum alloys to keep the weight down for efficiency. Steel is just too heavy for the needed structural strength.

GM made a big mistake using traditional stamped steel for the Ultium vehicles, all of which are incredibly overweight resulting in lower efficiency.

Aluminum is more expensive, more so now that for some bizarre reason we’ve declared war on Canada where most of it comes from (they do aluminum best because of low cost hydro power). Regardless it’s still more cost effective than steel for building efficient EVs.