Plenty of scope for Falcon's EcoBoost engine

There's one aspect of Ford's EcoBoost Falcon that may have escaped the notice of many. For the first time ever the locally-built Falcon is powered by a truly state-of-the-art engine designed for the mass market.

Just as importantly, that engine can be regularly updated with even newer technology. Three years separate the EcoBoost engine's original global release (in the Volvo range) from its introduction now, in the Falcon range. New technology for the advanced four-cylinder engine can flow through to the Falcon sooner in the future, now that the compliance work has been done to match the engine and its fuel-efficient technology to the car.

And as Ford's Andrew Fraser told motoring.com.au, there are plenty more fuel-saving tricks to flow through to the two-litre engine in years to come. Fraser, who describes himself as Calibration Development Manager at Ford of Europe, is a family man based at Ford's Technical Centre in Dunton, north of London. He has overseen the development of the two-litre engine powering the EcoBoost Falcon, but has seen the development effort for that engine cross the Atlantic, where Ford in North America tweaked the engine further for models such as the next-gen Escape (which will be sold here as the next Kuga).

For the Falcon, the most significant fuel-saving feature likely to be incorporated in the local design is auto-stop/start, but there are many other features yet to be integrated in the two-litre EcoBoost engine now powering the Falcon. According to Fraser, these high-tech advances will be introduced to Australia about 12 months from now, in the 1.0-litre three-cylinder EcoBoost engine under the bonnet of the tiny EcoSport SUV.

"The one-litre has pushed the boundaries pretty far..." said Fraser when asked by motoring.com.au how much further EcoBoost technology could progress. "There's a complete split cooling system, so the cylinder head is separate from the block and the cylinder head is split along the middle, so you've got a cold side and a hot side — and the coolant is very carefully controlled during warm-up, to give the best possible warm-up of the engine.

"We have smart regenerative charging, so the alternator charges most efficiently — maximum output — on the overrun. That's quite a significant benefit. The air conditioning is fully integrated in the engine management systems, so the output of the air conditioning compressor is regulated. It has stop/start on the manuals; we have a grille shutter to regulate the aerodynamics of the car, so you only get the amount of airflow through the engine bay that you need. The rest flows over the car. That's quite a significant benefit at highway speeds. The oil pump is variable-displacement [type], so you're only pumping the necessary amount of oil around the engine, and again, it's controlled by the engine management system. Lots of little friction-reductions; each one only a small contribution, but they all gradually add up.

"We actually developed a unique oil for the one-litre; we worked with BP... they came up with a 0W20 — a very thin oil, which is about another one per cent [deduction] in the friction of the engine. The one-litre has a belt drive, but the belt is in the oil of the engine. It's quite a unique Ford feature, so it's as durable as a chain, but it has the lightness and low friction of a belt.

"All those little elements all contribute to the total picture. At the moment I would say it's pretty much state of the art in terms of what we can get out of a conventional [engine]."

But those very features are not part of the two-litre engine's specification. That's simply a matter of timing, as Fraser explains. The three-cylinder engine is a very recent development, but the four-cylinder is already three years old, as far as the market is concerned.

"Because of the chronology, the one-litre has picked up most of that; there's a little bit less in the 1.6, although it's got many of those features. The two-litre hasn't picked up all that, so I think that's the sort of suite of technology you would look to deploy back again [in the two-litre], for example. The Falcon has the smart charging system on it. It doesn't have the variable grille shutter that the Mondeo has on the two-litre, so it's available in some two-litre versions."

So not all those features will necessarily trickle down (up?) to the two-litre engine.

"A lot of it depends on market demand, price positioning — how many features you can afford to add to the car," Fraser explains. "What ultimately is the customer willing to pay for? I think some of those features will get fed back on to the 1.6 and two-litre until all of them are at the same level."

Looking further ahead, Fraser suggests there are one or two singularly advanced sub-systems Ford could adopt for EcoBoost engines.

"There are some other things you can do: external EGR systems (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) like the diesels have; that can have some advantages. But then you're starting to step forward into the sort of micro-hybrid-type things where we have the belt drive-alternator/starter machine that can give you a limited amount of electrical propulsion but a greater degree of energy recovery. That's probably the next step beyond the one-litre package..."

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