Ford announced recently that they are doubling down on their efforts to expand their product line in terms of the cars that will be offered and backed by Ford's new EcoBoost technology.
Though there are many flavors of EcoBoost delivered by Ford the general recipe seems to be as follows:
- Use a smaller displacement engine compared to the current model's powerplant
- Use a turbocharged or twin-turbocharged arrangement on that smaller engine with up to 12psi of boost to produce equivalent or higher power figures to the old outgoing model's power plant
- Utilize flex fuel technology to support higher octane E85 for higher advertised power figures and better stability under boost
- Last but most importantly take advantage of direct gasoline injection (by injecting gasoline/E85) directly into the combustion chamber at 2150 psi compared to traditional port injection at around 40psi of fuel rail pressure.
The hidden 'trick' to pulling this off really is the Direct Gasoline Injection. Typically cars that run a combination of high boost usually need a low static compression ratio to prevent pre-ignition of the air and fuel mixture. And, a low static compression ratio means a low combustion efficiency when you are out of boost which generally produces bad emissions, bad throttle response (requiring you to go into boost more often than not) and bad mileage overall.
Direct Gasoline Injection makes the gasoline engine have 1 very cool feature which is direct control over fuel injection timing. If there is no fuel yet present in the cylinder, then no matter how much compression and boost there is in the combustion chamber, there is no fuel there to pre-ignite or detonate!
This revelation allows Ford (and other manuafacturers) to run what used to be unbelievably high static compression ratios, combined with a healthy dose of boost, and still deliver a responsive, practical and powerful net results.
The net result of the combination of these technologies is typically a 10 to 15% boost in power over the outgoing naturally aspirated engines combined with a 20% reduction in mileage and a 15% reduction in emissions....
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