Ford's local six could live on

[Road_Warrior]

http://watoday.drive.com.au/motor-ne...725-1hw2q.html

LPG development program hints at another life extension for Ford Australia’s locally made inline six-cylinder engine

Ford Australia has hinted that its new LPG engine developed for the Falcon will help the inline six-cylinder powerplant survive beyond 2015 — and even tougher clean emissions requirements.

Speaking at the launch of the Falcon EcoLPi engine in Melbourne this week, Ford’s base engine and alternate fuels supervisor Simon Flint said the Euro IV-compliant gas-fed powertrain was ‘‘capable of meeting future emissions targets’’.

This is the strongest hint yet that the inline six-cylinder will live beyond the 2015 cut-off that Ford will need to meet to comply with much tougher Euro V emissions targets — although whether it will continue to burn petrol is still under a cloud.

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According to Flint, the EcoLPi will use more fuel than the petrol version, but its strength is the lower overall emissions.

‘‘We can’t match the 9.9L/100km [fuel use] of the petrol as the energy density of LPG is at least 30 per cent less than petrol,’’ he says.

‘‘But the important point to make here is the CO2 performance of LPG, and the optimisation of benefit we’ve been able to achieve through the LPi program ... LPG produces about 1.5kg of CO2 per litre compared to 2.35kg for petrol.’’

‘‘It shows that LPG is really the greenest fuel, and the EcoLPi program brings the best out of it.’’

However, those numbers also suggest that any big future emissions benefits are more likely to come from the LPG engine rather than the petrol version.

Basing the new LPG engine on the current petrol one — the former EGas system, carried over from the former BF Falcon when Ford switched to its new FG Falcon in 2008, missed out on a lot of the work poured into the petrol engine’s development — means that the LPG engine now uses the same exhaust system as the petrol one, including a catalytic converter that helps it to meet the Euro IV emissions target.

Asked if the petrol version of the 4.0-litre six-cylinder engine would live on beyond the Euro V emissions targets, the response is quite restrained.

‘‘The engine is Euro IV compliant — could it go beyond that? It could with a development program, so there’s no reason why we can’t develop it further,’’ Ford's powertrain development supervisor Ian Cole says.

‘‘Both petrol and LPi [versions of the inline six] are capable of meeting Euro V in a similar scope to the catalyst program [helping with Euro IV],’’ he says. ‘‘Are we doing one? Wait and see.’’

Usually Drive are first to chime in with their doom-and-gloom crap with anything to do with Ford Australia, but this piece is interesting. Continuing the engine past 2015 (which is also the threshold for the supposed next gen large car) begs the question: what will it be fitted to?