Hyperdrive
Ford Revamps All-Important F-150 With Optional First-Class Seats
- Top-selling truck offers hands-free tech, electric powertrains
- Competition heats up among Detroit’s most profitable vehicles
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Ford Motor Co.’s redesign of its biggest moneymaker, the F-150 pickup, is more geared toward overhauling its interior than a radical reworking of its sheet metal, adding creature comforts like hands-free driving technology and reclining sleeper seats.
Sleep, it turns out, is in high demand from truck buyers who snapped up nearly 900,000 F-Series models last year, generating about $42 billion in revenue for the automaker. Ford conducted hundreds of hours of anthropological research on its owners only to discover what they really want is seating more akin to a first-class airline cabin than a no-frills shuttle bus.