The Ford 1.0-liter engine is a potent little package, that could benefit from this revolutionary technology.

According to Ford the newest form of variable displacement engines is here, well sort of. At first sight, the patent Ford has submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office increases the numbers of cylinders of its smaller combustion engines, but a further look reveals that this new technology does not literally increase displacement.

The patent description is paraphrased as such, “A device to generate an engine noise, and a method to generate the engine noise at a time period between two directly successive ignition events of an internal combustion engine — wherein the engine noise of an internal combustion engine is simulated in a virtual fashion.”

Improving fuel mileage has become a paramount objective for American automotive manufacturers, and Ford has taken a unique approach to combating the natural habit of drivers.

This brand-new technology mainly uses a placebo effect to increase the cylinder count, counteracting the lack of sound produced by a smaller engine with synthetic noises. This is an attempt to persuade the driver to shift sooner instead of drawing out the gear change to satisfy a primal instinct.

It is assumed that this technology will be utilized on its smaller manually-shifted Ecoboost engine combinations, with the three cylinder 1.0-liter and larger four-cylinder engines being the target platforms. These engines are designed to balance the performance gains of a turbocharged engine and fuel-savings of direct injection and Ti-VCT (twin independent variable camshaft timing) technology.

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