What’s inside the award-winning Ford EcoBoost engine?

Lift the hood of any EcoBoost-powered Ford and the eye is drawn immediately to the engine – few would notice the little black box discretely located to the side. But unbeknownst to many, that diminutive box holds the key to the EcoBoost’s balance of power and fuel economy: millions of lines of code.

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“Engines today are basically lumps of metal without the software,” says John Rollinger, Ford Motor Company’s technical leader for powertrain and gasoline engine control. “That little black box is actually the brain powering the entire vehicle. Without it, there would be no EcoBoost.”

The software behind the EcoBoost helps it to act like a much larger engine when customers want power – whether it’s on the track or accelerating on the highway to avoid a dangerous situation – while having the capability to be extremely efficient during day to day driving.

But how did the software behind the fuel efficient range of EcoBoost engines come about? Its roots can be traced back over 40 years. 

Where it all began

In the ‘70s, software began playing a larger and larger role in engine technology. The shift wasn’t born out of the need for more power, but from a need to build cleaner, more fuel efficient cars.

“The fuel crisis that hit in the mid ‘70s was a major turning point for Ford in terms of developing cleaner and more fuel-efficient engines,” said Rollinger. “People were beginning to demand engines that were fuel efficient but didn’t sacrifice performance, and we quickly realized that the best way forward was with the help of software solutions.”

So Ford began to tinker. New three-way catalytic converters helped reduce pollutants, but they required more precise control. To meet this challenge, Ford introduced its first electronic engine controller (EEC), the earliest form of what is now known as the engine control unit (ECU) – that little black box that accompanies every engine.

The first three generations of EEC gave Ford vehicles basic control of key engine elements, including electronic fuel injection, spark control and air-fuel ratio. But the major breakthrough in software processing came in the mid ’80s with the introduction of EEC-IV and EEC-V.

“The EEC-IV was built around a processor that had 64K of ROM, but within one year the EEC-V had 1 MB of ROM – so it shows you how fast the technology was growing. It was also around then that we started to use high-level code, which meant that engines were starting to work harder and faster for drivers.”

At the same time, the advent of onboard diagnostics (OBD) also took off.

“That little engine light that sits on your dashboard was a big turning point in the late ‘80s. This is when we started to use software to look for malfunctions and let the customer know of any potential issues or if service is needed”.

By the mid ‘90s engines were completely controlled electronically. Computing software had also become more than just about engine control – advances in OBD, transmission and fuel management meant a smooth, more efficient driving experience.

In 2003 another major breakthrough hit – Ford introduced drive-by-wire. This meant that drivers were no longer linked mechanically to the engine; instead their accelerator inputs were fed through the ECU that directly controls the engine. Because of this, engineers could fine tune every system to make the driving experience even more efficient in delivering power and economy.

“Over the next few years, innovations in our software began to happen closer and closer together. By this time, Ford had made rapid advances in monitoring and we started to experiment more aggressively with fuel efficiency. This laid the groundwork for the development of EcoBoost.”

EcoBoost: Built on software

Rollinger has a wealth of automotive software control experience, and has been front and center for some of Ford’s major computing and software milestones. But for him, nothing has been as impressive as the advent of the software for EcoBoost engines. 

The team of in-house software control engineers – today 100 and counting – were handed the difficult task of achieving unprecedented levels of fuel efficiency without compromising power, using a combination of software and the latest iteration of engine technologies like direct injection, variable valve timing and turbocharging.

To achieve the proposed level of power and efficiency for the new generation engines, an extraordinary level of precision was required. From ultra-precise fuel injections to continuously fluctuating fuel injection pressure, minuscule changes controlled by software made all the difference. For example, injection timing is adjusted up to 300 times a second to optimize combustion, resulting in a cleaner, more efficient burn.

“To be able to extract maximum efficiency out the hardware, we had to piece together hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code and related parameters. In the end we created one of the most sophisticated suites of software in the automotive industry at the time, and EcoBoost was born.”

The outcome was a fuel efficient and power-dense engine. The high-power output meant a smaller EcoBoost engine achieved the same output as a larger, traditional engine. The EcoBoost software also helped the team to eliminate the traditional limitations of turbocharged engines, such as turbo lag – this means that when a driver steps on the accelerator, there’s minimal delay and they’ll immediately feel that soulful “oomph” of the EcoBoost engine. 

The heart of the EcoBoost software responsible for this is composed of a unique database – built completely in-house – of information about how the engine and transmission operates. The engine has access to this deep library of data to enable the engine to play a lot of “what if” scenarios to prepare for anticipated driver demands.

“Let’s say there is a driver who is about to merge onto the highway. If there is an anticipated transmission upshift, the software is prepared to tell the engine to close the throttle slightly and leave the turbo wastegate closed to maintain boost pressure – no power will be sacrificed.”

Whatever the engine anticipates for, the driver is ensured a seamless and exhilarating driving experience.

“When we launched the first EcoBoost engine, and for the first time we were powering these larger vehicles with this new class of power-dense engines, that was a really exciting development for engine software. We’ve been building on that ever since.”

Is there more to come from EcoBoost?

“Innovations at Ford are happening much closer together, and the next generation of engines will deliver even better fuel efficiency, without sacrificing the power that drivers love.”