Ford to boost F-150 fuel economy with stop-start technology

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. is planning to put automatic stop-start technology on hundreds of thousands of F-150 pickups, including the high-performance Raptor version, to help drivers get better fuel economy.

Auto stop-start will be standard equipment on all F-150s with turbocharged EcoBoost engines starting with the 2017 model year, Ford said today. That could mean more than 60 percent of F-150s will have the feature, which saves fuel by shutting off the engine when a vehicle is idling.

Ford is making a big push to increase availability of auto stop-start, a relatively inexpensive technology that can improve fuel economy by about 7 percent in city driving, according to testing by the AAA motor club. However, the gain is not reflected in EPA fuel-economy ratings, so it increases the likelihood that a vehicle’s real-world performance will match or beat the number on the window sticker.

Currently, the vehicles get 19 mpg city and 26 mpg highway. 

Auto stop-start also is being installed with all EcoBoost engines on the 2017 Escape crossover, Ford’s best-selling nameplate after the F series. As a result, Ford says about 90 percent of 2017 Escapes will have auto stop-start.

The freshened Escape, which goes on sale this spring, and the F-150 represent the industry’s highest volume rollouts of auto stop-start, Ford said.

The 2016 F-150 comes with auto stop-start when equipped with a 2.7-liter EcoBoost engine. For 2017, Ford also will include the technology with the 3.5-liter EcoBoost.

It said the feature is “specially tuned for truck customers” and will not shut off the engine when a driver is towing anything or using four-wheel-drive mode.