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Comment by fulafel | Hacker News Reader

> While smaller turbocharged engines have improved EPA scores, in many of our road tests, we haven't seen such radical mileage swings compared with naturally aspirated engines. Ford's EcoBoost 2.7-liter and 3.5-liter V-6 engines, for example, return mileage on par with Chevy's larger 6.2-liter V-8.

Are these really standard fare in the US? In Europe the norm is more like 1.0-1.6 liter turbo engines in new cars.

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>> In Europe the norm is more like 1.0-1.6 liter turbo engines in new cars.

The Ford Focus and Ford Fiesta are the smallest cars that Ford sells in the US, and they are available with the 1.0 and 1.6 liter turbo engines.

Ford's mid-size car and crossover Ecoboost engines are the 1.5, 1.6, and 2.0 liter turbo engines.

The Ford Fusion sedan isn't a small vehicle, however. It's curb weight is 3,431 to 3,681 lbs.

The Ford Taurus full-size sedan is available with the 2.0 and 3.5 liter turbo engines, it's curb weight is 3,917 to 4,327 lbs.

The 2.3, 2.7 and 3.5 liter turbo engines are found in Ford's full size SUVs like the Explorer and Expedition, and full size 1/2 ton trucks like the F150.

You can buy the Mondeo in the UK with the 1.0 Ecoboost (yes, even the Estate version), which you'll know as the Ford Fusion.

The 2.7 ecoboost is used on pretty large cars by european standards: The ford F-150 pickup truck, the Lincoln Mk6 crossover, and the Ford Edge crossover. It is tuned on each of them to produce over 300 horsepower, so it's probably vehicles that are pretty different than the European cars you are used to.

That said, many times, for the same car, the US version doesn't even offer the small engine options that the same car has in Europe. For instance, the new Mazda MX-5 has a 1.5L and a 2L versions in Europe, but in the US, Mazda only brings the two liter option, because they'd not expect the smaller engine to sell very well. Something similar happens with the Ford Focus, that in Europe goes from 1 to 2 liters, while in the US there's only a two liter version, and the question is whether you just want a naturally aspirated one, or you want a turbocharged version with more power.

So in practice, there's a bit of having only the big engines for the same cars, but the biggest difference is that in the US, people find it just dandy to buy an SUV or a pickup truck to use as a regular commuter car, while in Europe gas prices and the difficulty of parking something that big in an urban setting leads to people driving far smaller cars.

My Hyundai Accent has a 1.6L engine, and that's considered very small by most people in this country.

A 3.5 liter V6 would probably be used in a sports car or a light truck. A 6.2 liter V8 is almost certainly a 3/4 or 1 ton truck.

For standard passenger cars, the norm is closer to 2 liters. European cars are considered "economy" cars and have much smaller engines because they weigh less.

Many Americans spend far more time in their cars than Europeans, and we generally have more space to park them, so we prefer bigger cars. Not nearly as big as they used to be, but still bigger than the rest of the world. Bigger cars need bigger engines, and we do lots of highway driving so performance is important too.

The 6.2-liter V8 is used in the Corvette. http://www.chevrolet.com/corvette-stingray.html The all-aluminum engine and carbon-fiber chassis bring the weight to just over 1.5 tons. It's insanely overpowered (I know someone who blacked out from the acceleration - in the passenger seat fortunately) but with the 8-speed transmission, it can still get 30MPG on the highway.

Ford also has their own 6.2 gasoline engine that comes in the F250 pickup truck.

American cars are bigger. We have bigger cities, bigger roads, more parking, gas is cheaper, Americans are fatter. Most American cars are above 2.0L, with some popular base models of foreign cars being 1.8L-2.4L.

Is that still the case? As of 2012, the Chevy Cruze is a 1.4L turbo, and it's not even Chevy's smallest car. It's a pretty standard low-mid-end sedan.

I have no data, just my anemic Cruze :-) (seriously, the turbo lag is terrible)

CAFE standards have been forcing an average downward push for a while. But it's still easy to get an absolutely enormous engine and vehicle.

I've driven a Cruze a few times as a rental, and rather enjoyed it. But it ain't a mid-end sedan. Rental car companies definitely classify this in the compact or economy class, and I think they're right to do so.

Yep, our cars are very overpowered.

I'll keep that in mind the next time I get behind someone that barely makes it to 55 mph at the end of an on-ramp merging into 70 mph traffic.

That's either a crap driver or gearing.

0-60 mph in around 10 seconds is fine for nearly all scenarios.

Ford 2.7 Ecoboost and 3.5 V6 are used on the F-150, which is not your regular car. It is however one of the most popular truck in north america (1st I believe), outselling cars in most states.

Careful with that statistic. People might think that we have more trucks on the road than cars which is far from the truth. Its mostly that there are really only about 10 models of trucks and probably closer to 100 cars.

The F-series outsells any other single car by at least double. 65192 units in November vs 30945 Camrys [1]. And trucks/SUVs/minivans/crossovers (all "light-duty trucks") as a whole outsell cars by about a 50% margin. But if you just compare pickup trucks to cars, it's ~200k trucks vs ~500k cars.

So, you can skew the stats however you want depending on how you want to look at it. Overall cars are actually the lesser-selling segment in the US.

1. http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html#...

No, those aren't standard. The 3.5 V6 and 6.2 V8 are the high end engines usually sold in the sport packages of those cars.

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