Jim Miller was trying to make cars go faster, instead his team’s innovation is making them stop faster.
“That’s the nature of innovation. You start down one path, and you end up down another avenue that you never would have expected to travel,” says Miller, director of automotive supplier Dayco’s Valve & Actuator Technologies division.
In 2011, Dayco launched Miller’s group as an in-house startup focused on expanding product offerings. The 112-year-old parts supplier focuses on belts and powertrain components, but corporate leaders saw the need for advanced actuation systems and created the team to explore technologies in that arena. One of the group’s first projects was a valve to manage turbocharger airflow.
Ford engineers saw the technology and had a different thought – brakes.
When Ford put the 3.5L EcoBoost V-6 engine in the F-150 in 2010, it made a huge bet that truck buyers would be willing to choose a turbocharged V-6 instead of a naturally aspirated V-8 in its most popular vehicle. The market response was huge, and in the years since launch, the twin-turbo engine has become the truck’s most popular engine option.
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From the October 2017 issue of Today’s Motor Vehicles.