Design Students Imagine Tomorrow’s Ford Trucks

Ford challenges college students to design the F-150 of the future.

A lot has changed in the automotive landscape in the past thirty years. One constant has remained – the Ford F-150’s stranglehold on the sale charts, with over three quarters of a million sold every year. Vehicle development over the next thirty years is looking to be even more rapid.

When CEO James P. Hackett took over the reins of Ford Motor Company last year, he wasted no time announcing large budget cuts to bolster the company’s bottom line. However, he also decided to invest heavily in Ford’s future – namely, into electric vehicle technology and the pickup truck lineup.

It’s an interesting crossroads for a company like Ford to find themselves standing at – looking into the future, while also working hard to sustain their current success. While some might find those goals to be counterproductive, Ford doesn’t see things that way.

The future may very well be electric, and Ford sees no reason to leave the F-150 in the past. As part of that investment into their future, Ford created a challenge for tomorrow’s car designers. Back in September, a group of students from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies were tasked with designing a truck for the future.

From these, three winners were chosen, with each receiving a $3,000 scholarship. Song “Daniel” Yixuan’s design was more evolutionary than revolutionary, looking like a natural progression of the aggressive raptor’s flared shape. However, detailed interior drawings impressed the judges enough to earn him one of those scholarships.

Seung Woo “Chris” Song’s design is more modular, allowing a buyer to mix and match front, cabin, and rear sections to create a vehicle that suits their needs. Most radically, Josh Bludo’s small, aerodynamic truck design featured a single-seat cockpit and recessed arms that grab and hold payload. It’s a useful design for light duty work in cities of the future, where today’s large pickups would be difficult to maneuver or banned outright.

When these student’s studies are complete, they’ll be ready to enter their careers in automotive design with an impressive resume. Which of these trucks would you most like to see in your garage of the future?