....IT's not likely that Ford Motor company would be interested in something that didn't have a good chance of working. But Ford built a prototype of the engine to test the MIT scientists computer modelling. The prototype proved the modelling was accurate. Then Ford was "in".
Note: from the OP:
.... the individuals who designed the engine(FYI: MIT stands for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, possibly THE premier institution of scientific and engineering research in the United States):
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MIT researchers have developed a half-sized engine that performs like a full-sized engine but offers the fuel efficiency of a hybrid electric car.
The team includes,
Leslie Bromberg, principal research engineer at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC),
Daniel Cohn, division head and senior research scientist at the PSFC, and
John Heywood, director of the Sloan Automotive Lab and professor of mechanical engineering."-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
____ and see:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/10/startup_working.html">Startup Working to Commercialize Direct Injection Ethanol Boosting + Turbocharging
MIT scientists and engineers earlier this year founded a company—Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC (EBS)—to commercialize their work on direct-injection ethanol boosting combined with aggressive turbocharging in a gasoline engine. (Earlier post.) The result is a gasoline engine with the fuel efficiency of current hybrids or turbodiesels—up to 30% better than a conventional gasoline engine—but at lower cost.
The ethanol-boosted engine could provide efficiency gains comparable to those of today’s hybrid engine systems for less extra investment: about $1,000 as opposed to $3,000 to $5,000. The engine should use less than five gallons of ethanol for every 100 gallons of gasoline, so drivers would need to fill their ethanol tank only every one to three months. The ethanol used could be E85.
Given the short fuel-savings payback time—three to four years at present US gasoline prices—the MIT researchers believe that their ethanol-boosted turbo engine has real potential for widespread adoption.
(more)
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___ and some more:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/04/ford-e85di-gasolinepfi-20090426.html">Ford E85 Direct Injection Boosting Study: A Less Expensive Alternative to Diesel
Proposed by John Heywood and colleagues at MIT in 2005, the basic premise of E85 boosting is that ethanol (or other lower alcohols) suppresses knock due to the large evaporative cooling effect it has on the air-fuel mixture when injected directly into the cylinder, supplemented by ethanol’s inherent high octane number. Using the E85 boosting concept requires two fuel tanks and vehicle owner acceptance of dual fueling.
With knock suppressed, the compression ratio (CR) can be increased; in a turbocharged or supercharged engine, even higher boost pressure can be used. The resulting higher BMEP levels allow downsizing of the engine at equivalent vehicle performance. The MIT team spun off a startup—
http://www.ethanolboost.com/">Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC (EBS) —in 2006 to commercialize the concept. (Earlier post.)
EBS has a collaborative R&D agreement with Ford, and participated in the study reported at the World Congress.
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Because of these factors, the E85 DI + gasoline PFI engine will cost significantly less than a diesel engine, and will be able to achieve more stringent emission standards due to the extremely high conversion efficiency of a stoichiometric TWC aftertreatment system. The E85 DI + gasoline PFI engine also uses a renewable fuel in a leveraged manner to significantly reduce petroleum consumption and total net CO2 emissions.
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....no offense to your (imaginary?) uncle but I'm willing to bet MIT's Bromberg, Cohn and Heywood know a little bit more about combustion engineering than he does. And I also suspect Ford would have found any flaws in their logic before getting involved in developing this engine.;-)