Ford high on fuel sippers

Automaker touts 'unprecedented' stake in powertrains geared to efficient performance.
Bryce G. Hoffman / The Detroit News


DEARBORN -- Ford Motor Co. offered more details in what it called an "unprecedented" investment in new fuel-efficient engines and transmissions Wednesday.

And, the company is so confident that its new powertrains will deliver the performance and fuel economy customers are increasingly demanding that it is tabling plans to build a smaller, lighter version of its F-150 pickup and import its Ranger compact truck from South Africa, The Detroit News has learned.

On Wednesday, Ford Americas President Mark Fields told reporters the automaker is making the investment to catch up with changing consumer demands for smaller gas-sipping vehicles.


Much of the new investment will be spent on rolling out Ford's new EcoBoost engines, which combine turbo-charging and direct injection to deliver more power and better fuel economy. Ford's head of advanced powertrain research, Dan Kapp, said the company also is looking at a technology called "ethanol boosting" that could make those engines even more efficient.

EcoBoost will debut on the Lincoln MKS sedan next year and quickly appear in other models. Ford's bread-and-butter F-150 pickup will get the EcoBoost in 18 months, Ford said Wednesday.

Company sources privately told The News Ford is hoping the fuel-efficiency gains delivered by this engine will obviate the need for the smaller pickups the automaker had been planning to sell.

As a result, The Detroit News has learned, the automaker has put aside plans to build the F-100, a smaller, lighter version of the F-150. The new truck was to have been built at the Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, but Ford has decided to retool that plant to produce small cars. It could still build the F-100 at one of its other truck plants if it later determines there is a need for the product. Ford has also taken steps to ensure that it can quickly change its mind if it decides it needs to bring a new global version of the Ranger to the United States.

Though sales have collapsed in the face of rising fuel prices, Ford's F-series remains the best-selling vehicles in the United States.

"We have no intention of giving up our leadership in trucks," Derrick Kuzak, Ford's global product development chief said Wednesday, adding that Ford will now make fuel efficiency a priority on all its vehicles. "Fuel economy (will be) a reason to buy -- no longer a reason to reject -- Ford vehicles."

At least one analyst said the Ford truck strategy makes sense.

"The small pickup segment doesn't really provide a lot of benefit," said Erich Merkle, an analyst from Crowe Chizek and Co. "You buy a pickup truck for bed space and towing. There really isn't much substitute for a full-size pickup. But it all depends on what happens to the price of fuel."

Initial capacity restraints
On Tuesday, Ford powertrain chief Barb Samardzich, told managers that the company is planning a big shift away from gas-guzzling V-8s and even V-6s to four-cylinder engines, though she warned that Ford will face significant capacity restraints for at least the next couple of years.

"You are going to see more four-cylinder capacity," Fields said, adding that Ford will retool its engine plants to allow them to produce bigger engines, too. "The key is having the flexibility to respond to the market place, whichever way it goes."

Ford also confirmed Wednesday that it is in discussions with cross-town rival General Motors Corp. on possible collaborations on powertrain development.

Further efficiency prospects
One company that Ford is talking to is a small, Massachusetts-based startup called Ethanol Boosting Systems LLC. The firm has developed a system that it claims will make Ford's EcoBoost engines even more efficient by injecting a small amount of ethanol into the fuel supply.

The company said its system will add $300 to $400 in costs to an EcoBoost engine, while doubling the efficiency gain. The system would require motorists to fill a small auxiliary ethanol tank about every 5,000 miles.

"It has its potential," Kapp said. "That's in the portfolio of things we're looking at."

None of these new technologies come cheap, but Fields said these investments will be partially offset by gains Ford has realized from its improved quality. He said warranty costs have dropped $1.2 billion in the past 18 months.

The company said its system will add $300 to $400 in costs to an EcoBoost engine, while doubling the efficiency gain. The system would require motorists to fill a small auxiliary ethanol tank about every 5,000 miles.

Detroit and Washington have fallen in love with the idea of burning ethanol in America's cars and trucks. Detroit likes the fact that converting a vehicle to run on the standard 85-percent ethanol/gasoline mix (E85) is cheap and easy and allows automakers to continue to build big cars and trucks. Washington loves a home-grown solution that secures votes in the Corn Belt and campaign contributions from big agribusinesses.

But ethanol has issues, as my 13-year-old daughter would say. The oil saved by burning ethanol doesn't amount to much. There are only about 1000 E85 gas pumps in all the land. Flex-fuel vehicles get 25-percent-fewer mpg on E85 than on gas, but the fuel isn't 25 percent cheaper. America's ability to grow more corn to make ethanol is limited, and the increased demand has already raised the price of many corn-based foods.

But what if there were a more clever way to use ethanol to improve energy efficiency other than simply burning it? An old friend, Neil Ressler, who was recently Ford's chief technology officer, called the other day to tell me about an idea invented by a company he's associated with called Ethanol Boosting Systems, or EBS. The idea is to take advantage of ethanol's naturally high octane number and excellent cooling ability to employ high boost pressure in a supercharged gasoline engine. Such an engine would develop huge power and torque, allowing it to then be downsized to improve fuel economy without sacrificing performance.

Here's how it would work. Start with a sturdy modern engine with port fuel injection and a high compression ratio, about 12:1 or even 13:1. Add a turbocharger or a supercharger, with intercooler, to produce 22 to 25 psi of boost pressure across a broad rpm range.

This sounds like a recipe for massive detonation that at full power would frag a conventional engine in a matter of seconds. To prevent this, the EBS engine uses—in addition to gasoline supplied by the port fuel injection—a direct-fuel-injection system to inject E85 to control detonation. Ressler says the E85, squirted directly into the chamber, fools the engine into behaving as if it were burning 150-octane fuel, letting it tolerate the otherwise destructive combination of high boost and high compression ratio.

The idea is to inject only as much E85 as is needed to suppress detonation, as determined by knock sensors and the engine-management system. At lower power levels, such as cruising down the freeway, the engine consumes no E85 at all, only gasoline. Therefore, E85 consumption would be modest, perhaps only 5 to 10 gallons for every 100 gallons of gasoline consumed. The E85 would be stored in a tank separate from the gasoline tank. Depending on the size of this E85 tank—and the heaviness of the driver's right foot—it might only need filling every three to five gasoline fill-ups. If the E85 tank ran dry, the engine would still operate, but with little or no boost and substantially reduced peak power and torque.

To replace a conventional gasoline engine, one would employ a far smaller EBS engine. To see how, imagine using this technology instead of a modern 3.5-liter V-6. Such a V-6 produces about 260 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque.
Motivated by 22 psi of boost, an EBS engine of perhaps 1.8 liters, barely half the displacement of the V-6, could easily achieve such output. The beauty of this approach is that modern cars and trucks rarely use their full power. Instead, they are loafing down the highway working at one-fifth or less of their peak output. When asked to deliver 25 to 50 horsepower, a 1.8-liter EBS engine would be running with no boost, consuming no E85, and most important, burning much less gasoline than the 3.5-liter V-6 it replaced.

Based on preliminary tests, the fuel saving is about 25 percent. That's not quite as good as the 30-percent fuel-economy benefit provided by a modern turbo-diesel, but since roughly 10 percent of a diesel's improvement over gasoline comes from the higher energy density of diesel fuel, the CO2 output per mile of the EBS engine is similar to that of a turbo-diesel.

More important, the EBS engine's fuel saving could be achieved at $2000 to $2500 less than a turbo-diesel's because the EBS engine gets by with a 1000-psi injection system rather than a 20,000-psi system and requires no urea-enhanced NOx catalyst or particulate trap. Furthermore, the EBS engine, using conventional catalyst technology, can achieve lower smog-emissions levels than even the most sophisticated diesel.

EBS calculations suggest that by using ethanol in this fashion, one could save perhaps three gallons of gasoline for every gallon of ethanol used. A conventional flex-fuel car barely saves two-thirds of a gallon of gas for each gallon of ethanol consumed.

The overall concept strikes me as sound and achievable, requiring no new technical breakthroughs. Engines are now undergoing bench tests at an undisclosed automaker I can guess based on Ressler's history. If the benefits are verified, the next step will be to install an engine in a vehicle for real-world tests.

I do wonder how easy it will be to generate the high boost at low rpm needed to achieve the instant throttle response we all prefer. But with supercharger and turbocharger advancements at full boil, this problem seems soluble. The other key is making sure the fuel-economy benefits of the EBS technology are not lost once adjustments are made to deal with real-world complications, such as elevated temperatures, substandard fuel, and warranties.

But if these hurdles are surmounted, we can expect EBS engines on the road early in the next decade. It would be nice for such a clever and original advance from a home-grown outfit to succeed.