While driving, we tend to experience all sorts of noise in our vehicles produced by combustion, wind, and the road. According to Ford, the new Focus has been tested and tweaked to literally “cut out the noise”. In fact, there’s even an NVH (Noise, Vibration, Harshness) team at Ford’s Technical Center in Germany to specifically deal with these issues.
In order to improve the NVH, the Ford team has done a number of things such as improve the dashboard and headliner absorption, introduce an NVH-optimized engine cover, a newly developed exhaust system, and reinforced hoses. They also performed tests that involved pressurizing the vehicle with air to fix any leakage, thus sealing the body as much as possible.
In the diesel engines, they revised the fuel injection system and reduced combustion noise. However, Ford’s Dr. Hildebrandt explained that they added a symposer to the engine to also improve the quality of its sound to match Ford’s sporty character. The Ford team even looked at metrics like Speech Intelligibility to measure how well passengers can communicate with each other with certain background noise present. They’ve made numerous attachment points on the vehicle a lot stiffer in the new Focus in order to reduce wind and road noise.
Compared to the current Focus, the changes are supposedly outstanding. The new Ford Focus will debut in the Philippines during the second half of this year.