Ford lets you sleep on the job with ultimate seats for F-150 ute
Ford realised customers would sleep in the F-150, so made special seats. Photos: Ford
In the time of Covid, your vehicle is becoming your second office or your escape from your family but Ford has taken it future by developing a “max recline seat” for its ultimate ute, the F-150.
Ford studied the F-150 pick-up truck for months to see how customers use the interiors of their vehicle to catch up on rest.
They then created the segment-exclusive seats that provide “business-class comfort” in the F-150. The seats fold flat to nearly 180 degrees plus have an innovative design that raises the seat bottom for lower back support while the upper seatback can be rotated forward to provide neck comfort.
The Max Recline Seats will be offered on King Ranch, Platinum, and Limited F-150 trucks starting in 2021 model year.
“The all-new Max Recline Seats in F-150 were inspired by those adjustable beds you see on TV to help make our customers more comfortable while resting in the cab,” said Ben Kulhawik, seat design and release engineer.
The Ford F-150 ute is used for families and at worksites.
“Our F-150 customers are constantly on the road or at a job site and being able to nab a few minutes of rest really is a boon to daily productivity.”
As part of developing the all-new F-150, the dedicated Ford comfort team went into the field with customers to see how they use their pickups in normal daily living. The team took hundreds of hours of video and thousands of photos while observing how people use their vehicles and what product “pain points” they either endure or find workarounds to compensate for them.
“We know the folks who work on construction or mining sites use their truck cab for naps during downtime, and we learned everyday owners do, too,” said Jackie DiMarco, Ford truck product line director.
“When I would take my daughters to hockey tournaments, between games, one would be sleeping in the back seat while the other would be on the floor of my truck, and it reinforced the idea that, ‘We need to fix this!’ ”
Whether a customer needs a quick nap while parked between jobs, just wants a comfortable, dry place to sleep at a campsite or a place to rest over the course of an all-day sports tournament, Max Recline Seats have them covered.
To make this new seating system come to life, Ford engineers figured out the best and simplest user experience, then created mockups to quickly develop a proof of concept. They used hot glue, foam core and pins to build up components and attach them to a standard seat frame so they could test multiple concepts. After finding the most promising design, they developed a fully functional metal prototype to refine the motion and comfort of the seat; then production parts were created.
Jackie DiMarco, Ford truck product line director, realised her F-150 needed reclining seats.
The end result: a seat that makes for a comfortable nap. The mechanism lifts the back half of the seat bottom 3.5 inches to make a flat surface to support the lower back. The upper seatback can also be moved forward for neck support. Ford’s all-new seats have been awarded five patents tied to the novel design and assembly process.
“There are no additional motors in these seats – just a simple mechanism that relies on the customer moving the seatback using the power recline function,” said Kulhawik.
“It’s simple, it’s effective, and we believe our customers will love how much more productive they can be just by getting a little more rest during downtime.”
As someone who could power nap for New Zealand, I love these seats. Now, if you include massage functions then they’ll be the best car seats ever made.
