It’s safe to say that the aluminum revolution has begun for American automakers. With the Ford F-150 rollout hitting a full stride, news has come out that Cadillac’s luxury sedan line will soon be making good use of our favorite metal. According to Automobile Magazine, the new Cadillac CT6 will feature an aluminum body when it gets unveiled in the near future.

Will the new Cadillac CT6 have the rakish, expressive styling of the Elmiraj show car, or will it be a conservative evolution of the luxury brand’s current design language? While those questions will linger probably until the CT6 is unveiled later in 2015, AUTOMOBILE has learned this about the sedan, which uses General Motors’ new Omega full-size rear-wheel-drive platform: It will have an aluminum body.

The Cadillac CT6, which will be a bit smaller than a Mercedes-Benz S-Class but larger than the midsize CTS, also will be the first to use an engine, or engines, from GM’s upcoming four-/six-/eight-cylinder family. We have learned that while a CT6 Vsport has been approved for production, there’s no word on a CT6-V yet, so some sort of turbocharged- or supercharged-six seems likely.

The aluminum body, which potentially keeps the new sedan in or close to the CTS’s 3,700-4,100-pound weight category, suggests that the CT6 is designed to aim for the Mercedes CLS-Class, BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe, and Audi A7 even if its styling doesn’t classify it as a so-called four-door sport coupe.

The new CT6 is expected to be revealed at car shows during the first half of the new year. Expect a lot of hype and press, as Cadillac has already called the sedan its new flagship vehicle.

Would you speed across the rails in a train car made of aluminum foam?

Sounds like a risky proposition, but it’s actually safe, strong, and mass-efficient. All of these things make this new aluminum-based composite one of the most exciting innovations the mass transit industry has seen in years. From Wired:

Americans have long been promised high-speed rail, but to date, we’re still far behind Europe and Asia when it comes to rolling stock. Now, we have one more train technology to envy our brethren across the pond: Trains made of aluminum foam, a material that’s stronger, lighter, and better in a crash than fiberglass or regular old metal.

Engineers in Chemitz, Germany unveiled a prototype high-speed train cab made with the stuff earlier this year. The composite material is built like a sandwich: Between two pieces of aluminum, each just two millimeters thick, is a 25-millimeter-thick layer of the “foam,” actually a low-density, sponge-like composite of magnesium, silicon, and copper, and aluminum. And like a good sandwich, there’s no glue. The layers are held together by metallic bonding, the electrostatic attraction of negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions.

The result is a material that’s 20 percent lighter than traditional fiberglass, which is commonly used on high-speed train cabs. That’s a big advantage when the goal is to move faster and more efficiently. Even better, it doesn’t come at the cost of a weaker train. “The outer shell is so stiff that you need no ribs inside,” says Dr. Thomas Hipke, head of lightweight construction at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology, which helped to design the prototype train cab. Peel tests of aluminum foam—in which force is applied to pull apart the layers of the material—destroy the foam interior instead of breaking the bonds between the layers, demonstrating the strength of the bonding.

To the layperson, the idea of 200 MPH inside of an aluminum-based tube sounds frightening. However, the science behind it is solid: it’s safer and more efficient than traditional materials, meaning that it gets the job done while being less taxing on our energy resources. Just like the Ford F-150, it’s another breakthrough innovation thanks to aluminum.

All sorts of Ford F-150 news today as we creep toward the official street date. Here’s a roundup of some of the latest aluminum-related news:

From Gas 2: “2015 Ford F-150 Curb Weights Revealed”

…the lightest 2015 F-150 you can buy is two-wheel drive regular cab model with the naturally-aspirated 3.5 liter V6, which comes in at a svelte 4,050-lbs. That, my friends, is actually lighter than the 556 horsepower Camaro ZL1, which comes in at 4,160-lbs (about 300-lbs more than a stock Camaro SS), and I’ve got to hand it to Ford, that’s a pretty impressive feat. Even with the 5.0 liter V8, the regular cab 2015 F-150 comes in at just over 4,220-lbs, and the smaller all-new 2.7 liter EcoBoost V6 equipped models weigh in at 4,168-lbs.

From the Toronto Star: “If driving is believing, 2015 Ford F-150 is the best one yet”

Whether it’s a gamble or a game-changer is still up in the air, but Ford has announced that the next-generation Super Duty will also have an aluminum body. And you better believe the other truck companies will crunch those fuel and capacity numbers when they’re finally announced. But driving is believing, and after my time behind the wheel, I think that for performance and handling, this new F-150 is the best one yet.

From the New York Daily News: “Test Drive: 2015 Ford F-150 aims to redefine the pickup truck segment”

But the new Ford’s aluminum construction and turbocharged V-6s make it the most technologically advanced full-size pickup, and the weight savings pay off in increased capability and, most likely, improved fuel economy. Considering those strengths, this advanced new Ford pickup should have no problem maintaining its sales lead. It looks like Ford’s gamble was a good one.

The official specs are impressive and the early reviews are backing it up. Looks like Ford’s investment in aluminum is paying off — and the rest of the industry will soon