Ford Introduces an all-new 3.5 EcoBoost and a new 10-speed transmission

joefromga said:

Just seems like a huge oversight.

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Well, never underestimate an engineer's ability to overlook the obvious. lol Now, admittedly, it may not necessarily have been a matter of overlooking something, but rather a decision based on engineering design risk/reward analysis. The risk of carbon build up may well have been significantly outweighed by rewards of better emissions/fuel economy, power, etc. -- especially if the impacts of carbon build-up would be much later in an engine's life and thus little risk to the manufacturer (i.e., being responsible for warranty repairs). I could even imagine that companies wanted to use a hybrid direct/port injection systems initially but had difficulty handling the integration of the two systems and thus utilized one initially allowing the design for a hybrid system to evolve.

I certainly am not in the 'sky-is-falling' camp, but I also do not believe it is a non-issue. It's hard to really know the extent of the problem -- it's not wise to rely on internet forums as a gauge because they tend attract those who actually have a problem (i.e., self-selection bias). I also will not necessarily fully trust manufacturers who say say it's mostly a non-issue. I would imagine that manufacturers are only going to become aware of issues when customers have complaints but a customer has to actually complain about the vehicle. The impacts of carbon build-up are generally going to set in gradually and I suspect a majority of drivers would never notice such a gradual change and thus never complain. This may well be exacerbated by the fact that on average, new car buyers keep their car for about 6.5 years. It may be that (if truly a non-issue) folks are getting rid of their vehicles around the time more noticeable symptoms would start to manifest.

airmengarrettm said:

RandomJoe, while automotive journalists constantly rail on all the things they dislike about CVTs, I'm with you I absolutely love them. I love knowing it has extremely large amounts of "gear ratios" to make sure my engine and transmission are running at optimum efficiency and smoothness. I love not feeling shift points!

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I have an admitted bias against CVTs because I dislike 'automatic' transmissions - just have never driven one I actually liked. Every one of my daily drivers has been a manual and I don't anticipate that changing. From my engineering perspective though, CVTs are awesome, precisely because of the inherent flexibility. The Achilles heel of the CVT seems to be the belt so it may well take an advancement in materials science for use in consumer friendly high torque applications.