The Next Ford F-150: Combining Old-Style Diesel Tech in a Futuristic New Design

As any student of automotive history knows, truly "new" breakthroughs don't just happen. Perhaps they are conceived in an "aha" type of moment but the engineering can take years to work out. All kinds of new engine designs have been conceived during the past century. Most of what we are familiar with are incremental improvements on basic designs. Even these take time to work out the kinks. For this reason many vehicle owners are reluctant to jump right in on the first year of a new engine design.

Needless to say, automakers and engine builders work very hard to minimize the speed bumps. Extensive testing is a given. And it all takes time.

Last month The Drive published a story about a new engine design for the next Ford F-150. The tech article by Caleb Jacobs takes a look at the direction Ford is taking with its most popular truck. The goal here is not just fuel economy but energy efficiency, and to achieve it they are drawing upon an older tech concept: pre-chamber ignition.

We've been reading a lot about pickups getting bigger, stronger and more muscular. What Ford is doing here is moving in the direction of diesel's other strength: efficiency. Jacobs opens by noting that with the dawn of a new EV age, most manufacturers are putting their creative energy in that direction, not in new technologies dependent on oil. What Ford realizes, however, is that the EV revolution is going to take decades till full adoption. The benefits outweigh the risks when you think it through.

At this point I will interject that there was a time when the earth was considered the center of the universe. Copernicus proved otherwise, that we were just a tiny speck in a massive decentralized space. This realization became known as "The Copernican Revolution." That is, the idea the earth was at the center and everything revolved around us was now proven wrong. Funny thing is, this "revolution" took 100 years before it became accepted as widespread knowledge. So it is that transitions take time, and though the EV revolution is more than two decades old, it has only just begun.

Ford has been investing heavily in this new engine design, $10 million over three years. Here's an attempt to describe what they are working on.

Last fall Road and Track did a story on Maserati's new MC20 Supercar that uses pre-chamber ignition. "Pre-chambers are exactly what they sound like: separate chambers inside the cylinder head connected to the main cylinder area. There are two types: active and passive. Active pre-chambers contain a spark plu and fuel injector, and ignite after a lean air-fuel mixture is brought into the cylinder. Normally, this mixture wouldn't have enough fuel to ignite on its own, but the fuel from the pre-chamber is enough to create an optimal air-fuel ratio, and speeding up the combustion process, improving efficiency."

The pre-chamber concept is an old diesel idea that has been used in the racing world as well. The Ford engineers are adding a little twist to the concept, some kind of compressed-air alongside the fuel injector. The objective is "to achieve faster, cooler combustion that burns fuel more completely while also producing fewer NOx emissions."

The real challenge is always in the translation from drawing board to reality. In theory, this will bring us one step closer to the ideal truck of the future, powered by fuel and not batteries, powerful and efficient simultaneously. 

Another surprising feature of the new engine design is that it will be 15% lighter than the current engine, with subsequent improvement in mpg as well. 

Go check out the story here at The Drive. They also have a video there on how the pre-chamber ignition setup works. 

This Road & Track story explains and clarifies Maserati's pre-chamber ignition design.