Ford to show all-new vehicle tomorrow. New Expedition?

[buddysystem]

I've rented a few cars over the last couple years with a rotary shift dial. I find that I don't look at the dial, I look at the indicator on the dash.

[akirby]

Sorry I wasn't clear - knew you had buttons.

 

I'd think rotary would be especially annoying with 3-point turns, etc.

 

I think you'd get used to it pretty quickly. Go test out a Fusion and see for yourself.

[blazerdude20]

I never said I wished they still put the 5.4 in it. My point was that I wished it had something like the GM 6.2 as an option on certain trims.

 

Also, 70% of f150 sales are V6, which is split between three different engines. Guessing that the n/a 3.5 is about 10%, that leaves both ecoboosts at 30% each. Which means the 2.7, 3.5, and 5.0 sell in roughly equal volumes. Ford offers the 5.0 because they're not willing to write that 30% off. But you already knew that....

The reality is the truck market is not the same as the large SUV market. There is a large percentage of the truck market that, for now, refuses to use anything less than a V8. So Ford has to offer one or lose the sales. The SUV market is much smaller and more directed at casual use amongst families versus income generators. Sure there are folks who refuse to drive a V6 Expedition or Tahoe but they don't represent a larger enough share of revenue to cater to.

 

Now if Ford gives a 4.4L Ecoboost V8 in the Nahigator we can have our cake...

[sullynd]

I think you'd get used to it pretty quickly. Go test out a Fusion and see for yourself.

I had one for a week one of the times they were trying to fix my Edge (I'd had a 2016 Fusion the week prior, but it was nearing its mileage so they swapped). The 2017 was better than the 2016 in every way, but I really did not like the dial.

[akirby]

Gotta love calculus!!!

 

You spelled algebra wrong.

[akirby]

Boy it's funny reading the misconceptions people have regarding HP and torque. I'm not trying to be insulting, this is just part of life as an engineer.

 

Exactly which part of what I posted is misconception?

[RichardJensen]

Boy it's funny reading the misconceptions people have regarding HP and torque. I'm not trying to be insulting, this is just part of life as an engineer.

 

Hint: "integrated over time" is the technical way of saying "area under the curve".

 

Also, the 5252 formula works because it introduces the time unit. The 5252 is just a unit conversion factor needed for the common english units used for both numbers. A conversion factor wouldn't be necessary if metric units were used.

 

Gotta love calculus!!!

 

You have apparently forgotten more physics than most people know.

 

Emphasis on forgotten​.

 

Power is not 'area under the curve'.

 

Power is the rate at which work is performed at a theoretical instant of time. Instantaneous power, over time, can be integrated to give a total amount of work performed.

 

Work is not the same thing as torque.

 

1 NM of torque is defined as one N of force applied to a moment arm 1 M long, 1 Joule is 1 N of force over a displacement of 1 M.

 

Furthermore, if the view of power and torque you appear to be presenting were correct, there would be no point in having transmissions. Transmissions multiply torque​ by decreasing the angular displacement over which force is applied (effectively increasing the length of the moment arm--in manual transmissions this is as obvious as considering the respective diameters of the input and output gears, torque converters are more complex) (NB: This is comparable to the law of the lever)

 

If power, not torque​, were what one 'felt' when one stepped on the gas, then one would feel the same thing regardless of what gear the vehicle was in because, as you are no doubt aware, power input = power output. Horsepower at the flywheel - parasitic losses = horsepower at the wheels.

 

When you increase the effective length of the moment arm in a gear attached to an output shaft in a transmission, the angular displacement of the output shaft is reduced proportionally, thus making the equation balance out (e.g., a 4:1 gear, in which the larger gear turns 90 degrees while the smaller gear turns 360 degrees). Torque can be multiplied, power cannot.

 

And that, frankly is what you started off complaining about: The off-the-line torque of EB engines.

 

Now, you make a point of saying that 'power and power alone is what determines how fast you can move x load up y incline'.

 

This is true, but it is trivially true. No full size SUV is going to operate at the GM 6.2L's horsepower peak for any length of time, and if, in the typical cruising range of, say 1500-3500 RPM, the EB consistently has more torque then it, ipso facto, produces more power in this range, making it a more powerful engine within normal driving parameters.

Edited February 9, 2017 by RichardJensen

[RichardJensen]

I get that you like V8s, but I have my doubts that you could tell the difference between a V8 and the EB if you were unable to see the vehicle you were in or hear the engine.

[RichardJensen]

Also, I'm not an engineer.

I have a degree in art.

[jpd80]

True but that was supposed be a graph of torque at the crankshaft, not trans output shaft. All I was saying is that the graph looked contrived.

We;come to the world of electronically controlled engines. The torque curve looks like that because the two turbos

are small so they come on boost quickly and stay there right through the range.

 

I can't speak for the 3.5 EB nut other Ecoboost engines also now incorporate an overboost function that gives

additional power for around 10 seconds fter a hard launch, it's normally in the order of 10% more power and torque.

[Gnostic]

 

Also, I'm not an engineer.

I have a degree in art.

 

This confirms a lot of my suspicions.

[Sevensecondsuv]

Wow I must have been more tired than I thought last night! Or maybe one too many citradelics (mmmmm).

 

HP is not the integral of torque as I claimed in my posts last night. At least not in any meaningful sense of the word. It is, however, torque with respect to time. A better way to think about it is that torque has the same units as energy (Joule, or N-m) while HP is the unit of power which is defined as energy/time.

 

So a simple analogy is lifting a 10 kg mass 10 meters high requires (10 kg)(10 meters)(gravity 9.81 m/s^2) = 981 N-m energy (or you could say torque since the units are the same). Now bring time into the picture and you can use the unit of power to describe how fast you lift the mass. It requires 981 N-m energy to lift the mass 10 meters but 981 watts of power (or N-m/s) will lift the mass in one second while 9810 watts of power will lift the mass in 0.1 second.

 

This is why power plants are rated in watts (unit of power) rather than joules (unit of energy). The energy production itself doesn't mean much without knowing the rate at which the energy is produced.

 

Back to cars, both units are valuable as an indicator for how an engine will perform in a given application which is why both are reported.

 

Anyways, this just goes to show why you should always take anything written on the internet with a grain of salt. It may have been written by a half-asleep disgruntled engineer that's had one too many!

[akirby]

You're right about time being part of the formula - in this case it's part of the RPM - Revolutions Per Minute. At a fixed RPM - say 2000 - the only variable is the torque. Less torque yields less hp yields less performance. More torque yields more hp yields better performance. Diesels generate tons of torque at low RPM therefore they're good at pulling heavy loads at slower speeds. But they run out of power higher in the RPM range so they're not going to win any top speed challenges. Ecoboost engines are also designed to generate torque at lower RPM based on the turbo design. They also lose steam at higher RPM. That's the tradeoff.

 

Your statement about HP being the only important thing is true IF you're looking at the HP rating at specific RPM - especially at lower RPM when a vehicle is just getting moving. But you can't simply use the peak HP rating because you can't go immediately to the peak HP rating. Take the example I posted - at 2000 RPM the 3.0 Diesel produces FAR more HP than the Honda 2.2L even though the Honda has a much higher peak HP - which means the diesel powered vehicle will get moving off the line much faster and/or be able to pull much more weight. OTOH the Honda would have a much higher top speed.

 

That's all we're trying to point out. In this context the fact that the 3.5LEB produces peak torque lower in the RPM band means it has more HP available at lower RPM even though the 6.2L might have a higher peak HP.

 

I can't explain it any simpler than that.

[Sevensecondsuv]

I think we all agree. Just coming at it from different angles.

[akirby]

Except the 6.2 is a good 40-50 HP more than the 3.5eb

 

This is where we disagree - you're only quoting peak HP figures without taking into account the available HP from 1000-3000 RPM which is where the ecoboosts have a big advantage over NA V8s. Maybe not as big as that graph showed but significant and that's why they consistently outperform the V8s in comparison tests.

[mettech]

[RichardJensen]

This confirms a lot of my suspicions.

 

Yep. And that degree in the humanities means I expect people to furnish independently verifiable facts to support reasonable conclusions and be able to separate beliefs and opinions from defensible conclusions.

 

Engineers, it has been my experience, are taught to apply logic to everything but their own thought processes.

Edited February 9, 2017 by RichardJensen

[Sevensecondsuv]

 

This is where we disagree - you're only quoting peak HP figures without taking into account the available HP from 1000-3000 RPM which is where the ecoboosts have a big advantage over NA V8s. Maybe not as big as that graph showed but significant and that's why they consistently outperform the V8s in comparison tests.

It is an advantage when the pedal is mashed through the first several gears and the engine is running between 4000-6000 rpm. But obviously pulling hills on a highway when the engine is in the 2000-3500 range the ecoboost will be stronger.

[RichardJensen]

(or you could say torque since the units are the same)

 

Just a point of clarification: Even though Joules are N*Ms, the same unit used to measure torque and work, they're not quite the same thing. Work has a displacement component, torque is strictly a measure of instantaneous force * the length of the lever.

 

The meter in a Joule is a meter of displacement, the meter in a NM of torque is the length of the moment arm. They end up having the same units because no new units are introduced when torque is applied (radians are unitless).

 

A full rotation of a meter long moment arm with one Newton of force applied = 2(pi) Joules of work performed--you thus have your displacement component and can combine that with time and calculate backwards to determine power. I *think* if a 1M moment arm is rotated in one second using 1N of force constantly applied, I believe you end up with 2(pi) Watts.

[akirby]

I have the same issue between my 2.0LEB Fusion and 3.7L MKX. The Fusion is soooo much faster off the line and at cruise speed. To get the same response from the MKX I have to floor it and wait until it gets to 4000 or so RPM.

[RichardJensen]

It is an advantage when the pedal is mashed through the first several gears and the engine is running between 4000-6000 rpm.

 

Holy crap. You're not exactly driving to optimize your fuel economy are you?

[fuzzymoomoo]

 

Yep. And that degree in the humanities means I expect people to furnish independently verifiable facts to support reasonable conclusions and be able to separate beliefs and opinions from defensible conclusions.

 

Engineers, it has been my experience, are taught to apply logic to everything but their own thought processes.

See my experience is engineers decisions are based solely on what a textbook says it should be and totally devoid of any logic.

[Anthony]

All this talk of joules and radians and I'm sitting here like...

 

[akirby]

See my experience is engineers decisions are based solely on what a textbook says it should be and totally devoid of any logic.

 

It's usually completely logical but doesn't always take into account the real world. E.g. that door may look like it's easily installed on paper/in the CAD system but in the real world it just doesn't work.

 

The other experience I've had on the software side is that they don't want to compromise their designs to meet business goals. E.g. give me something that works for 90% of the use cases delivered in 3 months instead of 12 months for 1/3 the cost.

[SoonerLS]

It's usually completely logical but doesn't always take into account the real world. E.g. that door may look like it's easily installed on paper/in the CAD system but in the real world it just doesn't work.

Lemme tell ya, you've never heard anyone complain about design engineers until you've heard a couple of retired field engineers when they've gotten on the subject...