Mid-life refresh is nearing for the most popular truck on the market, and it seems that the 2018 Ford F-150 Diesel will be introduced with upgraded pickup. Can the diesel powered trucks take over a significant chunk of the market or the gasoline-powered models will remain the dominant force in terms of sale results?
On the recently surfaced spy shots that were uploaded by Autoblog, we can see a standard F-150 without any obvious differences compared with standard gasoline version. If you take a better look, you will notice green fuel cap that indicates diesel fuel should be used while on the dashboard we see “Diesel Fuel Only.”
Additionally, on the images we see opened hood where engine bay is completely exposed. Various hoses and wires are noticeable, and even we do not know what is what we are pretty sure that all that mess will be put in order on the production version.
If it doesn’t receive any changes, it should offer 254 hp and 440 lb-ft of torque which is more than decent amount of power and especially torque. Main rival, Ram EcoDiesel with 3.0-liter turbocharged diesel unit is capable of producing 340 hp and 420 lb-ft of torque. When we factor aluminum chassis and lower weight of F-150 it should be able to beat Ram in both performances and fuel economy segments. Numbers on paper are one thing, but the real world is something different so to get actual results we will need to test both of these side by side.
Another quite nice feature that is expected here is the Start/Stop system but according to spy photographers, it wasn’t enabled on this truck through its testing. During its run, the engineer had to get under the hood as there was a slight problem in the engine bay. It is clear that more tests are required and that Ford will further improve its product before launch.
