Ford UK to Invest $1.8 Billion to Reduce Fuel Consumption and Carbon Emissions
17 July 2006
Ford Motor in the UK will spend at least £1 billion (US$1.8 billion) to develop a range of global environmental technologies in the UK for its Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo brands.
The project is designed to deliver more than 100 models and derivatives that reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions, including for example, a regular Ford Focus—the UK’s best-selling car—capable of more than 58 miles per gallon US (70 mpg Imperial) and CO2 emissions of less than 100 g/km.
This engineering program doubles the rate of environmental spending in the past. The project will require collaboration between the 9,500 engineers that work at Ford, Jaguar and Land Rover R&D centres in the UK and the broader strategy will also bring together engineers from Volvo in Sweden and Ford’s engineering bases in Europe and worldwide.
Climate change is one of the greatest single challenges facing the auto industry and society today. A broad business strategy that serves all our brands is the only way we can achieve the level of improvement in emissions and fuel economy required.
We are not going to introduce just one or two high-profile green cars that sell in relatively low numbers and leave it at that. By pooling our engineering investment, our brands will develop a broader range of technologies, available faster than they could afford individually. And by deploying these technologies across the breadth of our product range—mass market and premium products, passenger cars and commercial vehicles—we can deliver far more significant reductions in the total amount of CO2 generated by our total vehicle fleet. We can also help reduce our customers’ consumption of fossil fuels, which saves them money.
We are doubling the proportion of our spending here in the UK that goes into developing and deploying environmental technologies. But we call on all stakeholders to play their part in a holistic approach to develop technological solutions in cars, fuels and transport infrastructure to address climate change.
We need governments to set the right legislative and fiscal framework to allow competing environmental technologies to flourish without distorting the marketplace. That means focusing incentives on the CO2 outcomes rather than the vehicle or fuel technologies that deliver them. It also means more engagement with consumers to encourage a shift in behaviour over time.
It is critical that taxation incentives are intelligently applied across all car segments and over time to encourage sustained improvement. Dramatic tax changes which distort the market or unfairly target specific market segments will not achieve the results we all want to see.
—Lewis Booth, Ford of Europe and PAG Chairman and CEO
Ford will develop a range of technologies in pursuit of its goals.
We believe we have to follow a multiple technology strategy for three reasons. First, there is no single technology on the horizon that will enable the automotive industry to play its full part in stabilizing levels of atmospheric CO2. Second, we also cannot say for certain which way the market will go in the future and how much regional differences will play a part. Ultimately it will be customers who decide which technologies best suit their needs. And finally, as vehicles get cleaner and cleaner the technological challenge to eek out further improvement increases. By deploying multiple technologies we are able to make a series of small and medium size gains and leverage our range of vehicles and sales volume.
—Richard Parry Jones, Ford Chief Technical Officer
Ford will emphasize five key technology areas:
Lightweight materials. Ford will develop a new generation of lightweight premium vehicles. Jaguar has already launched two of the industry’s first mass produced all-aluminium monocoque vehicles.
Gasoline direct injection, advanced diesel, and new transmissions. Ford will offer five new gasoline engines with direct injection technology. These will selectively be further enhanced with pressure charging, stop/start capability and advanced valve actuation. These engines will enable downsizing while maintaining performance and driveability, offering a CO2 saving per engine of up to 20%.
Ford will launch three new advanced diesel engines with further CO2 improvements of 5-10% per unit.
Plans also include four new and advanced transmissions that through more efficient matching of gearing to engine speed will deliver CO 2 savings per unit of 5-10%.
Hybrid-electric systems tailored for different segments. Different driving conditions and the already high level of market acceptance for diesel technology in Europe will likely mean different couplings of engines and hybrid systems than in North America. Ford sees, for example, that micro-hybrid diesels provide a better cost-benefit proposition to customers than full gasoline hybrids, and are therefore the more compelling option for the European market.
The company will introduce a variety of systems deploying different levels of hybridization (micro/mild/full) coupled with either diesel or gasoline engines depending on customer acceptance in different global markets and the appropriateness for different vehicle types. Ford estimates the resulting CO2 reductions ranging from 8% for a micro-hybrid to 25% for a full hybrid.Alternative fuels. Ford will develop more core models across the brands with E85 capability. (In certain European markets such as Sweden, 80% of Ford Focus and Ford Focus C-Max and 16% of Volvo S40 and Volvo V50 sales are flex-fuel.) Ford is also currently working with BP on several projects that look at cars and fuels as a system to discover the most effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas and other emissions.
Both companies recognize that while existing bio-fuels will continue to play a role in the gasoline and diesel markets, more investment in R&D is required to deliver advanced bio-fuels solutions for the future.
—Phil New, BP Senior Vice PresidentDriver behavior. Ford is developing a set of driver information systems and selectable driving modes to allow the driver to optimize the operation of the vehicle to maximize the benefits of the fuel economy technologies. The company is also seeking to improve warm-up times, cut out drag and reduce loads by the smart switching of systems, reduce pumping and hydraulic losses and look at each system with a view to improving its interaction with the rest of the vehicle.
I hope they look at NGVs....these are starting to ntake off in Germany now the refuelling infrastructure exists, the best vehicles in relation to CO2 when combined with bio-methane.
Posted by: John Baldwin | 17 July 2006 at 07:45 AM
"We need governments to set the right legislative and fiscal framework to allow competing environmental technologies to flourish without distorting the marketplace. That means focusing incentives on the CO2 outcomes rather than the vehicle or fuel technologies that deliver them. It also means more engagement with consumers to encourage a shift in behaviour over time."
Definitely support that general principle. I trust they will be lobbying against subsidies for ethanol in the U.S. and the policy that allows low MPG flex fuel vehicles to appear to be high MPG vehicles by discounting the ethanol proponent. In addition, they should support the repeal of the way the current hybrid tax credit is determined,i.e, Toyota's credit is being reduced because they have already sold 60,000 hybrids this year.
I agree with the principle. We should just set the co2 standard and let the auto companies figure out how to meet that standard.
Notice, however, that Ford doesn't want tax policies that "unfairly target specific segments". In practice, a true policy that focused on co2 across all segments would clearly required cutbacks in SUV/truck production and consumption. Would this be considered unfair by Ford?
Ford also doesn't want to "distort the market". Well, how the hell do they think we are going to set and meet meaningful co2 goals without distorting the market?
Ford just wants incentives (carrots), but no sticks to meet co2 goals. Incentives, of course, also distort the market, but that's apparently ok.
Posted by: t | 17 July 2006 at 09:06 AM
While it's heartening to see that Ford intends to spend a lot of money on the development of environmentally friendly products, there is no mention of the timeframe for this additional GBP 1 billion spend - is that annually?
In sum, Ford Europe is playing catch-up with the rest of the industry here. Nothing suggests a desire to take a technology lead, not even the diesel hybrid. An HCCI diesel, now that would be ambitious.
Note that in a global context, all these good works of Ford Europe will amount to little if Ford USA refuses to leverage any of them ("not inventred here"). So far, they haven't even managed to get the updated, successful European version of the Focus ready for the US market.
Btw: Audi has had all-aluminium monocoques on the A8 and later, the A2, for a long time.
John -
NG is getting really expensive in the UK because local supplies are running out and no pipeline to Russia exists.
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | 17 July 2006 at 09:23 AM
Perhaps Bill Ford should put up or Ford will go the way of Chrysler, bailed out and then merged into another company. If his environmentalist background is ever to show, now is the time.
_Perhaps it is time to push their hydraulic hybrid w/ hydraulic CVT and micro/mild electric/mechanical couple on the side for electric generation and other purposes. It would be popular witht the construction industry since it would provide a way to save on fuel, and not having to lug/tow around generators/hydraulic pressure/compressed air. The militay would like the components/capabilities in their existing/future fleets too.
Posted by: allen Z | 17 July 2006 at 10:38 AM
Glad to hear that Ford Europe begin invest in direct injection lean burn and hybrid technologies, while 1B is not a big sum to such broad band technology developments.
In terms to eliminate market distortion, CO2 emission criteria is much more balanced that current MPG/liter per 100km criteria used to measure and advertise fuel efficiency, because diesel fuel is 1bout 13% denser than gasoline.
Posted by: Andrey | 17 July 2006 at 03:45 PM
Randolph Diesel invented Diesel cycle to remove the cause of pre-ignition of the Otto cycle for increasing fuel efficiency. Now both four-stroke Diesel and Otto engines heavily pollute the air and cause great harm to mankind. Despite of several decades of intensive engine research efforts to eliminate emission without penalizing the fuel efficiency, engine emission problem becomes worse as years go by. Then what is the main cause of the problems faced by the four-stroke engines? The answer to this question is (as I see it) that the expansion ratio of a four-stroke engine is equal to or less than the compression ratio. Therefore for high thermal efficiency a four-stroke engine requires a high compression ratio. High compression ratio leads to undesirable high combustion temperature. Currently low-temperature combustion is obtained by EGR or lean homogeneous charge autoignition combustion. EGR reduces geometrical efficiency and thus a smaller mechanical efficiency because of increased friction losses per unit power output. The HCCI engine can only operate at partial loads. For full load, it is necessary to shift seamlessly from HCCI mode to traditional four-stroke mode and thus back to square one. The hard lesson of four-stroke engine research efforts should have told us that there is no solution to the problems faced by four-stroke engines and a new cycle must be created.
For eliminating emission, the new cycle should have a lower-temperature combustion process without EGR. A constant pressure combustion process should be a part of the new cycle because the specific heat of constant pressure is 40% higher (for the air) than the specific heat of constant volume and the earlier burned fuel/air mixture will not be compressed to a higher post combustion temperature after burning. The new cycle should have a much longer expansion stroke than the compression stroke (as in a Miller cycle) for high thermal efficiency without high combustion temperature, a high power density to reduce mechanical losses per unit power output, a low specific engine weight for reducing manufacturing costs. A new overexpanded two-stroke constant pressure cycle is created as a theoretical foundation for developing an overexpanded two-stroke engine to operate on so that all of these desirable features can be achieved. More information on overexpanded two-stroke constant pressure cycle and engine will be provided by request.
Posted by: Pao Chi Pien | 28 July 2006 at 08:49 AM