NEW YORK -- Ford Motor Company's fuel efficient EcoBoost engine will be honored Thursday evening with a Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award at a ceremony at the Hearst Tower in New York City. The Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards, now in their fifth year, recognize products and celebrate innovations poised to change the world, and the passionate, smart creators behind them. Ford is the only automaker this year to receive a Breakthrough Award.
"From flying cars to robots to wind turbines for homes, the innovations honored by the 2009 POPULAR MECHANICS Breakthrough Awards not only capture the imagination, they hold the potential to improve and even save lives," said James B. Meigs, editor-in-chief, POPULAR MECHANICS. "We are pleased to honor this year's diverse list of visionaries, Dean Kamen among them, and applaud their efforts to address such concerns as climate change, pollution, energy shortages and medical care in the developing world."
EcoBoost, which uses turbocharging and direct gasoline injection to boost engine output, reduce emissions and improve fuel efficiency by as much as 20 percent marks a major milestone in the Ford strategy to deliver technologically advanced, high-output, smaller-displacement powertrains.
The Ford powertrain management strategy uses hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code and related parameters that are adjusted to optimize the engine and transmission operation. It's these processes that largely make up the more than 125 EcoBoost patent contributions and makes Ford’s use of direct injection and turbocharging of its engines like no other automaker in the world.
Derrick Kuzak, group vice president, Global Product Development, Ford Motor Company, will accept the award in New York.
"Ford engineers looked at every available engine configuration, comparing power, price, economy and emissions, determining the best way to power Ford vehicles in the future," said Kuzak.
"EcoBoost technology gives us everything: a combination of the performance buyers expect and fuel economy improvements they demand that, until now, only has been achievable with the latest-generation turbo-diesel powertrains."
By 2013, more than 90 percent of Ford's North American lineup will be available with EcoBoost technology. In selecting the candidates and winners of the 2009 Breakthrough Awards program, the editors of POPULAR MECHANICS (PM) canvassed a large range of experts and academics to come up with a list of worthy nominees. Members of PM’s Board of Advisers reviewed the nominations to help the editors of POPULAR MECHANICS choose the winners.
A complete report of the Breakthrough Awards will be published in the November issue of POPULAR MECHANICS (on newsstands October 13, 2009). High-resolution images of the winners as well as full conference coverage will be available upon request and at file://www.popularmechanics.com/.
