More Power and Better Fuel Economy — Whats Not to Like?
The obvious solution has been for manufacturers to start putting diesel engines into their light-duty pickup trucks but the large price difference between regular unleaded and diesel, often about a dollar per gallon, has caused a rethink of that plan. Ford says it has put off (at least for a couple years) its previously announced plan to offer a diesel in the F-150 in 2010. Instead, the company is developing a V-6 EcoBoost engine for the F-150 which employs turbocharging and direct-injection — a design that Ford says will deliver similar power to a V-8 engine — all while using less gas. Such engines are cheaper to build than diesels — less than $1000 more costly than a conventional V-8 in comparison to the $4000 or $5000 price tag of a diesel engine, according to Ford. That thousand bucks buys you more power, expected to top the targets of 340 and 340 pound-feet of torque from the 3.5-liter turbo V-6, compared with the 320 and 390 for today’s 5.4-liter Triton V-8. It will also retur
