Bill Pierre Ford

To make a difference, there must be an impact on millions of affordable vehicles, Kuzak says, which brings us back to Ford’s family of GTDI engines that will roll out in four-cylinder and V-6 guise across the lineup, building to half a million annually in North America in 2012.

“Combining direct injection and turbo and downsizing engines substantially are what is unique,” Kuzak says of the Ford plan. He says the payback period to cover the increased cost of EcoBoost technology on a four-cylinder engine through fuel saving is about 2.5 years, compared with 7.5 years for a diesel and 11.5 years to recoup the extra cost of a hybrid.

Also in the plus column: an expected 15-to-20-percent improvement in fuel economy and a 7-to-15-percent reduction in CO2 emissions per vehicle, Kuzak says. And he insists performance will not suffer and that the automaker is able to control turbo lag, as well as increase boost and the compression ratio. He further claims the engines will achieve the same 10-to-20-percent fuel-efficiency improvement that hybrids get in city driving but are unable to achieve in highway driving. Add to that the low-end torque advantage similar to a diesel. That’s a lot of talk. We’ll let you know once we get our hands on the first MKS to see if it walks the walk.

Mid-term plans under the sustainable blueprint (the 2012-20 time frame) will focus on reducing vehicle weight up to 750 pounds, depending on the vehicle. That means more liberal use of aluminum, magnesium, and lightweight steels, Kuzak says. A small car in 2020, for example, should weigh 500 pounds less than it does today, powered by a 1.0-liter GTDI, compared with a 2.0-liter conventional gasoline engine today.

Once Ford gets the ball rolling with the MKS, it plans to add EcoBoost technology to engines in 500,000 vehicles, including the new Flex, over the next five years, which means they will replace as much as 90 percent of the engines in the Ford family of vehicles today. Cost is keeping the automaker from implementing EcoBoost in everything in the short term, Kuzak says.

The technology is a key component of Ford’s new “Blueprint for Sustainable Future” that is designed to address global warming with emissions solutions that are economically feasible, Kuzak says, noting about 18 percent of global emissions from all sources come from light-duty cars and trucks.

The blueprint is broken down into immediate, mid-, and long-term plans in an attempt to reduce emissions by 25 to 50 percent by 2020.