Auto-stop next for Falcon?

The Ford Falcon has gone all sensitive and new-age to reduce its thirst for fossil fuels. The latest initiative to reach the market is the EcoBoost four-cylinder engine with direct injection and turbocharging.

What will come next though for Ford Australia's large car? One fuel-saving feature there's a good chance we will see in the EcoBoost Falcon is auto-stop/start, says Andrew Fraser, Ford's Manager for Gasoline Powertrain Development and Integration. Flown out from his UK HQ to help Ford Australia promote the EcoBoost Falcon, Fraser revealed to motoring.com.au that auto-stop is an idea that has been circulating within the company for a while and Ford is committed to it. But the Falcon's automatic transmission is a stumbling block to early adoption of the fuel-saving feature in the local design.

"It's being developed, but I think it's a little way off yet — making it work for an automatic isn't so much of a challenge on the engine side, it's more on the transmission side," said Fraser. "You need a means of driving the oil pump in the transmission. Really, it needs a stand-alone electric oil pump on the transmission; you've got to do some quite extensive development on the transmission side."

But ZF has developed an eight-speed transmission specifically to cater to auto-stop/start systems already in the market. Ford Australia has a well-established relationship with the German transmission specialist ("they would like to sell us more transmissions, but then we would like to buy more also," says Ford Oz powertrain engineer David Mitchell). What's stopping Ford Australia from simply sourcing a compatible transmission from ZF?

"That might be a solution, but stepping up to an eight-speed transmission might be a big cost step," Fraser replied. "We did look at, in fact, because we've got a manual version of the two-litre in Mondeo, as well as the automatic. We did consider doing it for that, but because it's the top of the range in Europe, we kind of concluded that the customer who was that keen on fuel economy would probably buy a 1.6 anyway. So we've focused the stop/start development on the 1.6."

Out of curiosity, we asked Fraser whether he considered Auto-stop/start was worth the effort.

"Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant," he replied unequivocally. "I've had a couple of cars with it — and now I've got a car that doesn't have it I really miss it. On the test cycle, the NEDC, it's [worth] about four or five per cent. On the open road it's zero, but if you drive around a big city... it could easily be 10 plus per cent..."

Mazda has already overcome the problem Ford faces with matching auto-stop/start to automatic transmissions. Indeed, the Japanese firm already has its Mazda3 SP20 SKYACTIV available in local showrooms with that very combination. Ford still owns a three per cent stake in Mazda, but Fraser steers clear of suggesting the blue oval brand could have cherry-picked Mazda's auto-stop/start facility out of the SKYACTIV technology suite for its own products. He does say that there's a philosophical gulf dividing EcoBoost and SKYACTIV.

"Really we arrived at a fork in the road. They wanted to go the SKYACTIV route; high-revving, high-compression, naturally-aspirated [petrol] engines. We already knew that we wanted to go the EcoBoost route — still capable of revving, but much more about low-speed torque..."

Unlike the SKYACTIV setup, EcoBoost's auto-stop/start facility doesn't stop a piston at top dead centre. According to Fraser, the Ford model uses a bi-directional sensor and 'knows' where the pistons are precisely located in the engine for easier and immediate starting.

"We have the technology; the one-litre and 1.6, which both have stop/start, have special sensors," Fraser explained. "It doesn't force the engine to stop at the top, but it knows exactly where the engine is, even if it bounces back on start — because it's a bi-directional sensor. It knows precisely where the piston is, and can then fuel as soon as you're at the appropriate point in the stroke. That's one of the advantages of direct injection; you don't have to wait for a full induction stroke, pulling the air in through the intake valve and then compressing it — as long as there's air in the cylinder, which there always will be.

"You don't then need to do a full rev to synchronise the engine, so that's a saving in position detection and getting the fuel in quicker. Direct injection is good for stop/start in that regard."

Returning to the question of auto-stop/start for the EcoBoost Falcon, that's one initiative that will depend on the Americans, it seems, although the Falcon itself may be a catalyst.

"I know Ford is working on it and I think the first applications are in North America, so if I had to hazard a guess it's probably a couple of years away — something like that range," says Fraser. "It may depend on the Falcon project; if it's a big success they may keep developing it. It's certainly in active development; I know we've got automatic stop/start under way, for a couple of years' time."

Given the information supplied by Ford Australia that the next major update of the Falcon will focus even more on reducing fuel consumption, it's our guess that the auto-stop/start system will be well and truly on the agenda for the EcoBoost Falcon in 2014.

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