Gadgetory

the Ford Edge is only on its first facelift in its relatively young life but the real remodeling has taken place under the hood let's drive this 2012 Edge Limited with the little 2 litre EcoBoost motor and check the tech ok normally we start these videos inside the car but the best tech story in this guy is under the hood because this edge is a 2.0 liter EcoBoost motor 2 litre inline-four sitting sidesaddle the kind of engine you expect to find in a very small car like a focus or something not in a two ton crossover SUV what they've got going on here is Ford's EcoBoost that's two key technologies it's twin turbo charging so the turbo charging is optimized for different parts of the rpm band and that's an important Achilles heel to overcome with turbos and secondly direct injection that means the gasoline is scored at under really high pressure right into the cylinder right by the spark plug that allows the fuel to be metered precisely you don't waste any and to be sported in there right at the moment the detonation wants to happen so you're not getting any kind of a sloppy burn this also allows the fuel to remain cooler relatively when it's in the cylinder before detonation this is important when they design engines because it lets them have a higher compression ratio the ratio of which the engine the piston and the cylinder compressed that air and fuel before it explodes by doing that you get more power out of the gasoline you use but the trick is you tend to get spark not that detonation sound that a bad engine has by having the cooler fuel charge you can get around that all of this adds up to 240 horsepower 270 foot-pounds of torque that's a big torque number out of this little mill it moves this 4000 pound beast which by the way is about the heaviest in its class up to 60 in about eight point eight seconds not bad we'll see how it is on the road but the key is the mpg number they get 30 highway out of this combination that's psychologically really important when you're marketing a car 30 is one of those big numbers 21 City and as we're gonna see the combined real-world average it's quite nice let's go inside first okay I know the first thing on your mind is does this vehicle have the upgraded MyFord Touch that'll shut me up from complaining about how slow and complicated the other version is the answer is no so I'm still gonna complain a little bit this is the outgoing generation of my Ford touch that is just too busy and responds too slowly to touch commands Ford knows they've got a new version coming I've tested it out on the Auto Show circuit and it's much crisper we'll see that in a couple of months that said you're also gonna notice here a lot of touch controls this won't be changing these are the kind of things that you just put your hand over no button actually moves they're capacitive I believe I'm okay with these I don't need this kind of convenience on something as simple and positive as climate control I still like a knob for temperature and maybe another one for the fan this just seems needlessly delicate for something that doesn't need delicacy it needs positive feedback and an easy grip so here's this gearbox that is the only choice on the 2-liter EcoBoost it's a six-speed automatic period notice the gate PR nd L kind of going back 50 years right no paddle shifters no shiftable section no shifting rocker on the side this is a very straightforward automatic transmission we'll see how it plays out on the road the key to this engine is what gear you're in all cars these days seem to be programmed to seek top gear all the time it's really infuriating but that's one of the key ways that get mpg out of these things as we run them along at 1,100 rpm when you're cruising on the freeway sometimes lower with this engine because it's small displacement and it's got a spool up to create its power those top gears can get in the way and make it feel really leaden until it spools up changes a gear or two and then off you go it's not turbo lag so much as it is mode lag this transmission is part of the issue it's a very standard six as we saw if it had a sport mode or was programmed a little more aggressively to hop down to gear this car would get much snappier but that would probably shave off those few mpg that separate this guy from the v6 so it's probably not a point to be made all in all the car drives well it does not feel that the engine is overmatched just needs a little thinking what I like driving it regardless your payoff is right there on the MPG display i got between 23 and 24 mixed real world driving moving to tons of big tall square metal around with a two-liter 4 ok let's take this guy and doll it up seen that style first of all I'm gonna go with that 2-liter EcoBoost 4 looks like a pig on paper as we saw it drives a lot better than that in real life the MPG boost over the v6 is not night and day you're not gonna save enough to buy a house with the matter gas you don't use but it's an important threshold that it gets to in real world and Highway mpg in terms of the cabin tech I'm gonna go with that 301 a package to get navigation dual panoramic roof the keyless the better lights all that stuff but I'm not gonna do any of that until let's say early q2 of 2012 when this guy comes out with the new my Ford touch firmware that is key the early edition I saw is a whole lot better and that really makes this car in terms of a central screen interface