Ford: Fuel-Saving Business Case Lies With Gasoline Engines
August 06, 2008

By Bill Visnic

DEARBORN, MI - At a press event here to showcase its '09 models, Ford Motor Co.'s top engine-development honcho says the company's gambling its development dollars on gasoline engines, not diesel, as the best path to improved fuel economy and improving the company's sustainability "profile."

Dan Kapp, director-powertrain research and advanced engineering, said Ford essentially is betting the farm on its upcoming "Ecoboost" suite of gasoline-engine enhancements to improve fuel economy, reduce emissions, and, by definition, jack up the company's Corporate Average Fuel Economy numbers towards the eventual federally mandated goal of a 35-mpg fleet average by 2020.

Ford also is working on other near-term fuel-saving technologies, of course - specifically hybrid-electric and plug-in hybrid-electric systems - but Kapp said the company is less convinced of the possibilities for the third rival for automakers' fuel-efficiency spending: diesel engines.

Ford actually plans to introduce a new diesel V8 for its F-Series pickup line next year, but Kapp said the company isn't too keen on diesels prospects for passenger cars, despite the fact diesels now account for roughly half of the European light-vehicle market. Too much expense for too little return, Kapp said.

"The issue in the North American market is the additional cost associated with meeting (current) emissions standards," Kapp said. He insists Ford will make more oil-saving impact with its coming Ecoboost gasoline engines, which leverage the technology double-team of direct fuel injection and turbocharging to enable engineers to fit much smaller engines than those to which American drivers currently are accustomed.

Kapp said Ford will achieve more with the 500,000 Ecoboost engines it plans to have annually in the market by 2012, as opposed to what even the most strident diesel proponents will admit is likely to amount to comparatively small diesel-engine penetration in the immediate future. The most optimistic estimates place diesel's potential share of the U.S. market at 15 percent by 2015; at the current selling rate, that would amount to a total of about 600,000 diesel-powered vehicles sold in the U.S. annually.

Instead, Kapp said Ford's Ecoboost gasoline engines, thanks to wide deployment, will have a greater overall impact on the nation's fuel consumption than any likely amount of diesel vehicles - the company said Ecoboost engines will be powering 23 percent of its vehicles in the 2010 calendar year - and a compelling 90 percent of its entire U.S. model range by 2013.

Ford will deploy the first Ecoboost engine - a 3.5-liter V6 - next spring in the Lincoln MKS flagship. It will be quickly followed by fitment in the popular Ford Flex crossover. And Ford will have an Ecoboost V6 in the crucial F-150 lineup in late 2010.

The combination of turbocharging and direct injection allows a smaller Ecoboost engine to take the place of a larger powerplant. An Ecoboost V6, Ford said, will mimic the power and torque of a V8, but with two fewer cylinders. And today's V6 engines can be displaced by a much smaller 4-cylinder engine enhanced with the Ecoboost technologies.

Ford's numbers say the 3.5-liter Ecoboost V6 gives a 2-mpg improvement compared with Ford's widely-used 4.6-liter V8, for example. It sounds like a small increment, but eventually spread across the practically the entire product lineup, Kapp said, it will amount to a giant reduction in overall fuel consumption.

PHOTOS:

1. Lincoln MKS first model to use Ford's new Ecoboost engine technology.

2.  Ecoboost combines efficiency-enhancing direct-injection fueling with power-hiking turbocharging.

Posted by Bill Visnic at 9:16 PM under Business , Companies , Ford , News , Technology | Comments (1) | digg this | Seed Newsvine

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