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Filed under: Tech, Videos, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury

Autoblog speaks EcoBoost with Ford Powertrain Direc

Turbocharging has long been associated with performance, but the 103-year-old technology is also very efficient. A small displacement gasoline engine with a turbocharger can equal or out-perform similarly sized naturally aspirated motors while also saving fuel. Europe is all over turbo engines for everything from high-performance Porsches to family wagons, but here in the States, force-fed engines are mainly sold in low volume sports cars.

Ford intends to jump into the turbocharging arena in a large way with “EcoBoost“, and is planning to move up to 500,000 vehicles in the U.S. annually with twin-spool technology. Ford claims its EcoBoost suite of engine technoloies will give customers fuel savings of up to 20% versus a like-powered naturally aspirated engine, and the first samples are scheduled to go on sale in about a year. We wanted to learn more about Ford’s plan, so we accepted an invitation to talk with Ford’s director of Advanced Powertrain, Dan Kapp. Click play on the video above to see what Dan has to say about EcoBoost.

Filed under: Vehicle Buying, Gadgets, Tech, Aston Martin

Aston is working with its bureau, Splendid, to create the DBS of vehicle configurators, and by the looks of it, the site must have cost a lot more to build than a DBS does. Splendid started off by creating a 3D render of the car that actually looks photorealistic and not like a virtual representation that gets lost somewhere in the uncanny valley. When you change the color — to any of 2.5 billion combinations, according to the DBS designer — you aren’t simply tinting a model of a automobile, you’re looking at a vehicle in that color.

Inside, the configurator is detailed enough to let you zoom in to see individual stitches on various interior surfaces. And each part of the automobile is highlighted, so you can select your wheels with full-screen images and get complete specs on the wheels alone. And when you need a break from deciding on the red brakes or silver, you can watch videos and create your own video channel.

After you have configured the car you want, the fun continues at the dealership. Dealers will be provided with Samsung UMPC’s that allow further configuration — even matching the color of an item you bring in for the paint job on your DBS. It’s a setup worthy of Q himself, even though they didn’t mention whether you could install a defibrillator in the glovebox. Click the link to check out a demo of the keynote video that explains it. (Note: you need Silverlight to view it.) Thanks for the tip, Ben!

[Source: Mix]

Filed under: Motorsports, Coupes, Sports/GTs, Ford

Click above for a high resolution gallery of the FR500S Mustang

If there is anything better than racing on TV, it’s racing on HD TV. Just a few days after the first customers received their Mustang FR500S race vehicles, Discovery Channel’s HD Theater announced that it would be doing a three-part television series on the special Ford Mustang Challenge racing series that exclusively features these pony automobiles. The show will take a detailed look at the inaugural year of the series, from the first testing sessions this month all the way until the last race in September. Miniature in-car HD cameras will capture all of the action on track, and the identical specs of each Mustang ensure that there will be plenty of it. There is no word on when the series will actually debut on HD Theater (we asked, they really don’t know), but the press release after the jump provides all the available details for now.

[Source: Ford]

Continue reading Ford Racing Mustang Challenge gets HD reality series

Filed under: Automobile Buying, Plants/Manufacturing, Chrysler, Ford, GM

If you’re in the market for a Focus sedan, the question is, exactly what kind of Focus will you buy? According to Ford’s option sheets, there are 100,000 different combinations you can create. Eighty percent of Focus sedan sales, however, are comprises of just 4,000 of those combos. This glut of choice has increasingly become an issue that translates into lost money, unhappy customers and overwhelmed dealers for the Huge Three, and now they’re going to trim the options tree.

Ford’s new marketing chief Jim Farley has said, “Coming from Toyota, I can tell you that the opportunity is there to reduce the complexity of our line-up.” Toyota vehicles are not known for an obscene wealth of choice, even though Nissan has found itself with too many choices on the Maxima and Altima, and has cut them down recently. Meanwhile, the domestics are working to figure out how to rationalize the choices they offer — and the money they spend on them — with the need to give people want they want.

Ford is doing it by shrinking the number of “buildable combinations of the 2008 Focus by 99 percent.” Chrysler has reduced its own complexity by a claimed 93-percent over the last two years by jettisoning options. And GM’s global platform strategy aims to severely curtail the expense of developing and building a automobile. Said marketer John Tulloch, the manufacturers can win this fight “if the savings are used to improve remaining models and reduce sticker prices.” We can only hope.

[Source: Yahoo]

Filed under: Economy, Hybrids/Alternative, Green, Driving

These days it seems more common to overhear comments about a particular car’s appalling fuel economy than idle chatter about the weather, which makes sense when a gallon of gas costs as much as a cheap umbrella. For instance, just the other day there was some guy going on about how his automobile was getting 3 mpg less than just a few months ago and had no idea why. That’s until it was pointed out to him that his car’s adjustable luggage rack was in its full, upright position, giving his vehicle the aerodynamic efficiency of a cinder block.

That’s just one of the points Forbes includes on its list of things to do so you can drive green without buying a new car. Improving your gas-guzzling vehicle’s sleekness by losing that luggage rack, ditching that inefficient and egregiously ugly three-foot-tall spoiler and quit sticking your hand out the window are all tiny things that add up to an appreciable difference at the pump.

Most of the advice is common sense we have all heard before, but Sebastian Blanco, editor of AutoblogGreen, offered a novel suggestion for the list. Reduce your car’s weight by only filling up half the tank. One gallon of gasoline can weigh as much as 6.5 lbs. On a 2008 Ford Escape, a half a tank of gas weighs 53 pounds.

Like the Forbes article points out, there’s only so much you can do to curb a car’s drinking habit, especially if you’re driving something like an Escalade. But in smaller, lighter automobiles, even small steps like this can make a large difference in your fuel bill.

[Source: Forbes.com]