You know that game at a county fair where the jar is full of jelly beans and if you correctly guess the amount, you get one of those stuffed bears? We suck at that game. Not sure whether it’s some kind of hand/eye coordination problem or that we’re distracted from drooling over what could be 100 or 45,000 tasty jelly beans.
Today, we present the figurative jelly bean game, but if this jar is full of Ford vehicles with EcoBoost® engines, you have to guess how many you think sold in 2011. Go ahead, take a moment; we’re again distracted by drooling, this time over a jar full of Ford vehicles.
Brrrrrr! Imagine your job as a Ford engineer is to test vehicles and powertrains for durability and endurance. Wait – did we mention that you’re responsible for doing so in extreme temperatures and that might mean hanging out in a test room at the Ford Dearborn Proving Ground where temps can dip as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit?
Here’s the deal: purchase or lease an eligible new 2011, 2012 or 2013 Ford vehicle during the program period and you’ll receive $500! And, when you combine this Student Bonus Cash with other current public incentives, you’ll really be raking it in.
We’ve told you before about the things lurking inside Ford vehicles that may sound fairly bizarre but in reality are ultra revolutionary. You know, like recycled denim jeans acting as sound insulation, and carpet as an ingredient in cylinder heads covers. Ford is also exploring the idea of coconut fiber as reinforcement for plastic parts.
Any long-time fan of the Ford F-Series trucks won’t be surprised to hear that for the 35th year in a row, the F-Series is the best-selling truck in America. And it has been America’s best-selling vehicle overall for 30 years. With 584,917 trucks sold in 2011, the F-Series was the only vehicle to break the 500,000 vehicle sales mark for the year.
Now, that’s something you’ve possibly never heard of, an elliptical acoustic mirror. Ford engineers used it to measure noise as well as pinpoint the source of it on the all-new Escape – specifically, on the surface of the vehicle, such as wind – in order to ensure the interior would be quieter than the previous model. As you can see from the photo, it sort of looks like a satellite dish with a microphone.
The growing number of Ford Fusion customers, as well as owners of competing vehicles, will have more reasons than ever to check out the all-new 2013 Ford Fusion the debuted at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. We caught up with John Jraiche, Chief Program Manager for the Ford Fusion, at the show and asked him to highlight some of the technology in the new model.
Not long ago (what, like three weeks?), telling someone he had his head in the clouds was not necessarily a good thing. Say that now and it means he is a tech-savvy hipster! If you’ve never heard the phrase “the cloud” or “cloud computing” before, it looks like it’s here to stay and you need to bone up on it, which rather loosely means you can access data hosted off-site (think: virtual server) from pretty much anywhere online.
Winning an impressive award? All in a day’s work.