The current generation Ford truck came out in 2003. Ford began looking into making large trucks lighter shortly afterwards with an eye to the next generation, which is scheduled for 2014. It was this generation of F-series trucks that prompted Ford to look for ways to lose weight since there were some of the heviest trucks Ford ever made and they knew they couldn't sustain this.

One key item that was wrong in that "Tech" article is that Ford themselves initiated this, not "Obama's CAFE standards" (some in the press also took away the fact that GM being innovative created the Volt, not a government mandate in exchange for a bailout).

Ford's been working on this for about 7-8 years.


The Lightning concept was a thinly disguised concept version of the next Lightning. It had not just the supercharger and an intercooler, but a "Supercooler".

What it was was a device that directed short blasts of cold air from the A/C into a small additional intercooler device which was good for sudden gobs of additional horsepower by chilling the charged air even more than the intercooler.

It was killed when it was time to give final approval and set up contracts with suppliers partly because it was about that time that Pickup truck (and large SUV) sales began to slide and Ford delayed the program, finally killing it when the large truck market caved in. You can also look at the bad press the Excursion had as a contributing factor.

These were the things that prompted Ford to commit to getting weight out of their light duty trucks.

 

Interesting. Roughly 20 years ago I played with an idea of plumbing tubing from an A/C unit into the intake ports of a small block Chevy in an attempt to achieve similar results. (The idea being to cool the manifold itself not the air; similar to "icing down" intake manifolds with dry ice.) Unfortunately it never got off the engineering sketch pad and I didn't even develop a prototype.

 

Depends on if you're calling them "Generations" or simple "restyles". I can't say that I know all the structural changes Ford has made to the F-150 over the years but I am pretty sure the current F-150 is in its 12th Generation introduced for the 2009 MY. The 11th Gen was the 2004-2008, the 10th Gen was the 1997-2004 and so on.