Ford has built the EcoBoost engine to be the motor of choice for a wide variety of vehicles

FORD Fiesta Ecoboost has features normally reserved for bigger, more expensive cars, including traction control and rain-sensing wipers.

MUCH has been made of Ford and the EcoBoost technology it is using to bring its vehicles into the world we now need. This technology is now available and used in several continents all over the world in several configurations, and it looks to be the way Big Blue is going to meet all the different demands of efficiency, emissions requirement, reliability, and an appropriate level of driving dynamic and energy.

The EcoBoost engine that has gotten the most attention, and very rightly so, is the 999-cc three-cylinder turbocharged motor that has won its class in the International Engine of the Year Awards four years in a row. It is a clean-sheet design of an engine configuration that is traditionally a rough one to begin with. Yet Ford has built this little sub-liter powerplant to be the motor of choice for a wide variety of vehicles. It was not the first engine to use the EcoBoost name nor is it the latest, but it is probably the best example of what can be done. At the core the key points of EcoBoost are gasoline direct injection and turbocharging.

Gasoline direct injection uses highly pressurized fuel directly injected into the combustion chamber of each cylinder, as opposed to the more traditional mixing with the incoming air in the inlet port. This allows more precise delivery of fuel (less waste), improved volumetric efficiency (more power can be produced than previous similarly-sized combustion chambers and the avoidance of engine knock (allowing engines to be tuned to higher levels while avoiding incorrect combustion of the fuel/air mixture that can cause damage). Basically, modern design, production and perhaps most important computing power allow engines to operate far more precisely than ever, at levels previously reserved for highly tuned and highly finicky performance engines that would require high levels of care and feeding (tuning and high-octane fuel.)

THE FORD Explorer is loaded with a lot of goodies.

The other key ingredient is turbocharging, which again comes from the same technological advances in design, production and computing. On the simple side, turbocharging takes air that would go to the exhaust and uses it to power a turbine that increases air pressure (from the regular atmosphere, not the air from the exhaust) which allows a properly tuned engine to produce more power. The negatives of turbocharging traditionally are heat (increased pressure means increased heat which works against trying to up the power), lack of proper oil circulation (the oil demands of the small, fast-spinning turbine can be very different from those of the rest of the engine) and turbo lag (the time when the turbine isn’t moving quick enough to have the desired effect then comes on strong, which can be rather dangerous for many drivers.) Modern turbochargers can operate at high speeds (Ford says the 999-cc EcoBoost turbine spins at almost twice the rpm of those powering Formula One cars) and because the engines are built from the ground up to be turbocharged then they are designed to handle the oil and heat issues.

The 2015 Ford Escape, made in the USA, is powered by EcoBoost engine technology.

Besides the power and performance advantages of all these efficiencies, other areas benefit as well. Ford quotes a 15-percent reduction in CO2 emissions compared with older larger engines used to produce the same power levels, and the more precise delivery of fuel helps consumption figures. Additionally, the commitment to a smaller size means that new vehicles designed to use these engines can be designed with less space needed in the engine compartment. Even if you don’t want to make the nose smaller, this still allows emphasis to be put on other things like cooling, pedestrian crash safety and so on. Of course the lower weight means potential improvements for performance, fuel efficiency, handling and the like as well.

As stated, the 999-cc EcoBoost turbo is the best example of what this technological package can do. The general program is being applied to many different motor sizes for use in a wide variety of cars including, rather surprisingly, muscle cars. The EcoBoost name is or will be on the flanks of everything from little Fiestas through Focus (Focuses? Foci?) and Mondeos and Transit Vans and Explorers and F-150s and Police Interceptors and, yes, the Mustangs. The driving experience can be very different in all these though, and what is expected from a little city car is very different from what is expected in a truck or a sports car/muscle car. There is a whole community of enthusiast purists who want nothing to do with turbocharging, though to be honest they are probably thinking more of the traditional old-school boost systems as opposed to the modern almost-seamless power and torque deliveries either here or just around the corner. It is actually the direct-injection systems that can now be so precisely monitored and controlled that do much to alleviate the non-linear characteristics of forced induction turbocharging. In general though, all this must come to pass.

One thing to note here is that all these advances come not from only one area or because of one thing but because of the increased cooperation and communication between systems. The small hardworking engines may be great, but much of their efficiency comes from the fact that modern transmissions now allow the nuanced power delivery and transmission needed to allow it. These are all in flux, and what works well for one product may not be so good for another. Transmissions in particular, you now choose from standard automatics, dual-clutch systems, continuously-variable transmissions and a few manuals still around here and there. But the dual-clutch or CVT that works wonders in one vehicle may well be a let-down in another, perhaps because they are not yet as perfectly-matched as they could be. Still, all these new developments are clearly pointing the way to the future.

These systems and those like them are being accepted more and more, as the general public is increasingly aware of the issues they and the world face and what is needed to try and keep our globe and the cars we love still workable, usable and loved.