So I went to the Ford showcase yesterday and saw the company’s variation of a turbo-charger. I got the chief engineer of the Taurus SHO to try to explain it. It apparently adds 102 HP without affecting fuel economy.
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A lot more interesting video than that 911 truthing idiot Sheen.
The bottom line is the government has a fixed fuel economy test cycle, that the car makers can optimize their engine management systems for. If you use the turbo, your fuel economy WILL suffer.
The Ford ecoboost like many, many other systems (Toyota hybrid synergy) has been engineered to pass these laboratory tests which have only a passing resemblence to real-world driving conditions.
The example that really brought this to light for me was the 4th generation GM F-body (Z28, TransAm) which had a solenoid lockout on partial throttle intermediate gear manual shifting. It seems the test criterion specified that the driver shift from low gear to the next available gear and continue for some period of time. They forced a shift to high gear to pass the test, and so all production cars had this stupid lockout. However, full throttle shifting (not in the government test regime) was not affected.
He’s showing his PR roots.
Real brave to turn off comments on the truther B.S. Real classy to do it on the anniversary. Please please please stop the “just asking questions” canard and please listen to the answers.
Maybe this guy could be the car technology czar.
He uses a lot of words to say almost nothing.
In a nutshell he is saying that if you don’t use the turbo (accelerate slowly) you won’t use extra gas. This is hardly a new concept.
I used to work at the local Volvo dealer and Volvo has been using direct injection since 1970 and combined it with a turbo since about 1980.
It appears from his description that the only thing new is the label “EcoBoost”.
Trying to pass off 4 decades old technology as new might explain why American car companies are struggling against the Foreign companies that have been wringing every bit of mileage they could from a gallon of gas.
but I could explain it better than he did and I greatly suspect so could you. He really doens’t emhasize the mechanics of boosting and fuel injecting over normal aspiration. Stupid.
I also wish to complain. Dvorak Uncensored and your post two COMPLETELY CENSORED articles in a week. I can “understand” but still disagree with the Ted Kennedy article. But Charlie Sheen???? I don’t see ANY rationale there.
I noticed this posting was “No Comment” for a short time before switching to WHAT A BLOG IS ALL ABOUT. I assumed McCullough just forgot or failed to do it but its taking a while.
‘Eco Boost’ is not direct injection and\or the turbo. In fact that tech. is nothing new nothing new. It’s lame marketing. As with any force inducted vehicle, as long you are not in a boost condition you will not burn any more fuel than a NA vehicle (without a turbo or supercharger). ‘Larry the Ford guy’ fails to mention that to John. Want to build a car with better fuel economy cheaply? Simple. Drop the fricken weight. 2 tons for a typical car or 3 tons for a ‘light’ truck is just stupid.
From what understood: if you have a car with 250HP, most of the time in normal driving conditions you probably aren’t going to use all 250HP.
That’s why we’d all be better off with 4-cyl engines instead of 6 or 8.
But, we like to buy cars with BIG HP numbers. So now we can buy a car with a big HP number and a smaller engine.
Sounds good to me.
nice to see ideas Saab brought to family cars in the late 70s finally being adopted and improved upon
“So I went to the Ford showcase yesterday and with the company’s variation of a turbo-charger.”
Is that really a sentence?
Haha, I just saw a commercial for the new Taurus. Look at the fuel economy in the fine print–something like 17 city/24 hwy.
I owned a Taurus for 6 yrs or so and its economy was around 26/33.
So glad they’ve made improvements with fancy names that don’t affect fuel economy since they lowered the benchmark to begin with.
So let me get this right….
On a TAURUS, which is a mom and pop vehicle for in city driving, they are putting a 3.5 liter engine with a base 250HP, and upping it to 350HP with the turbo. On a friggin’ Taurus? The car that my dad bought in his old age to drive my mom to church?
By his own admission this car will not meet mileage specs if you leadfoot it. Which in reality means driving like a little old lady.
The TAURUS as a car model should be super economical, with a 2.5 liter engine at most, lightweight, super reliable and very comfy. Instead we get a monster engine, finicky, expensive car that no self respecting motorhead will ever buy just because of the name on it.
US car manufacturers at their best… producing the wrong product for the wrong market.
okay. the way a turbo is supposed to work is that it uses exhaust gases to spin up the impeller on the intake side. extra air in without taking any extra energy out of the system (that wasn’t being expended as waste, anyway). the extra air should increase the air/fuel ratio up to something more closely approximating a pure stoichiometric ratio, which is a boost in efficiency and should boost power because you’re getting a more complete burn in the cylinders. turbo doesn’t increase the rev limit by itself, nor does it help the spin-up time (turbo lag usually hinders it to a small degree), so why does turbo use fuel at a greater rate (thus the crappy fuel economy)?? and I’m not using PR info for the SHO to hypothetically determine that. Across the board, fuel economy is inversely proportional to bhp. you can see it in the Subaru WRX, and the Mazdaspeed variants of their cars, and it’s been that way for years (going way back to the first sequential twin turbos of the Toyota Supra and Mitsu 3000GT). What am I missing about this design? Turbo should be a relatively efficient way to recoup about 15% of your gross energy output.
beyond that, I’m going to cry foul on Ford for claiming a 40% boost in output. 40-60% boost is in the realm of superchargers, not mere turbos. I bet their real-world numbers are closer to 40bhp.
I see the carping here, but as I own a 98 SHO, I’m expectantly waiting to take a test drive in the new SHO and see how things shake out.
Shoot, why not put the comments on for the 9/11 post? Especially if dissent is the highest form of Patriotism.
check this out – much more fun.
John – let me know if you want a tour. Plus, Charleston’s beautiful this time of year. 🙂
The Taurus has gained to so much mass it has smaller Fords orbiting around it. They should do a Fusion SHO instead and call this one the Taurus Cruiser
Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) is patented to Mitsubishi Motors, who may not have thought of the idea in the first place but who definitely perfected the engineering behind it. Variable speed and electrically assisted turbocharging (VW patent) improves the efficiency of an engine, at all engine speeds. Combined with ECU managed adiabatic intercooling, these will all radically improve the fuel economy and performance of any gasoline engine.
#11, the government fuel economy ratings have changed in 2008. The new fuel economy ratings are more realistic than the old ratings. For example, under the old rating the 1995 Ford Taurus would achieve 24 city, 32 highway… under the new rating it is 18 city, 27 highway.
I think the Ecoboost is good but they can still squeeze performance and fuel economy out of big engines. The Ecoboost 3.6L V6 in the Taurus SHO makes 365 hp. Compare that to the LS6 offered in the 2010 Camaro that outputs 426 hp and that car still manages to average 16 mpg in the city. I’ve actually been more impressed by the 4 cylinder Ecoboost engines Ford has been working on.
And the new Taurus is the same as the Ford Mondeo, in Europe and the rest of the world. A very, very good chassis, faster than a BMW 5 series around NĂĽrburgring.
Good video. Very exciting.
I can’t wait to see what the aftermarket tuners are able to get out of this engine. I’m guessing about 410hp and 450tq with just a chip upgrade and 91 oct
He hesitates a bit when explaining it, for a reason.
Turbochargers are big gas hogs when you jam the pedal down. They use the exhaust flow, above a certain threshold, to jam more intake air into the motor. If this excess air isn’t matched by excess fuel really expensive things start to happen.
So if my mom drove a turbocharged car she would have dramatically improved performance when she occasionally wants it without much worse fuel economy. When I drive a turbocharged car I use it to speed up faster most of the time: that sucks gas and increases maintenance (if I’m smart makes me change the oil every 1500-2000 miles.)
Turbochargers are not new. This marketing is BS. Well calibrated fuel injection plus a turbo is a good thing, but let’s not pretend to write a new chapter in automotive history.
When Honda finally accepts the turbo some really interesting things will start to happen. They still make the best engines. Subaru deserves the real credit for this, and their cars DO go like stink, but their execution is still only B+ or A-.
3.5 liter engine EcoFriendly??????
There’s a USA/Europe cleavege right there.
It was a very informative and interesting video. Unlike some commenters, I don’t think he was trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. He did a good job of explaining how the two work together to give a high available hp without the continuous drag of a bigger displacement engine.
Let me be clear on one point: the power output of an engine is proportional to the fuel dumped into that engine.
The definition of power is the rate at which energy is converted to work. Work is required to move you. More work per unit time is required to move you faster (by definition), and as I said, the rate at work is done is power (by definition). Fuel is energy.
A turbocharger recovers waste heat (energy), and does work on the pistons, adding to the total power output of the engine.
A supercharger subtracts work from the crankcase (pistons) to cram more energy (fuel) into the engine.
All engines are “optimized” to operate at a particular speed. I’ll call this speed a center frequency just to confuse you.
And deviation from the center frequency is suboptimal, and wastes fuel.
If you want more power, you have to pump more fuel per unit time.
McCullough turning comments off on “Questions for President Obama on September 11″… what the fuck is he afraid of?
It goes to show you the car industry
For the uninitiated the Ford “SHO” (Shogun) was an ultrahigh power sleeper of a run of the mill appearing Ford Taurus with high performance parts and especially a high powered and equipped Japanese engine ( hence Shogun)
It was sold often to oil execs and the like as a tool in the companies anti-terrorism highjack prevention
One fly in the ointment in this auto industry logic – no more gas use
However its like buying Coke on sale
If you have more of the product on hand ( in this engine power and acceleration) you will consume a lot more of the product – and hence in this case burn a lot more gas and fuel reducing the miles per gallon (m.p.g.) count in the real world of auto drivers and automobile ownership
#28
you are a complete flipping moron, and I have writtern an more interesting post in a completely smashed condition than you’ve written.
Sounds good. How much better is this machine in reality than the competition?