Just as mini-blinds help keep out the sun, automakers are starting to use their own version of shutters to keep out the wind, making cars more fuel-efficient.

These are no ordinary window treatments. Rather, they are high-tech mechanisms that are sandwiched between the car’s grille and radiator and are controlled by the car’s engine computer. The computer uses several factors to decide whether the shutter slats should be open, closed or somewhere in between.

When they are open, the car can breathe better on hot days or under stress, like when it’s chugging up a hill. When they are closed, the car becomes more aerodynamic, trapping or disrupting less air and increasing fuel mileage up to 2 percent.

Ford is using the shutters on its new Focus, both regular and high fuel-efficiency versions. Chevrolet has them on its new Cruze Eco, a high-mileage model of the new compact sedan.

Both were preceded by BMW, which uses them in Europe on cars with smaller engines than it sells in the United States.

Every drop counts

The powered shutter system to smooth airflow in the front of the car is an example of the lengths to which automakers are going to squeeze every extra bit of mileage they can out of their cars to meet a government requirement to average 35.5 miles per gallon across their vehicle lines by 2016.

“It is a systematic approach to a complex problem. We’re attacking every system on the vehicle to be able to improve efficiency, rolling resistance, weight reduction (and) aerodynamics,” said Don Ufford, Ford’s vehicle engineering chief. “You’ll see more of the competition do this, and you’ll see this (shutter system) on more Ford products.”

Better engine computers key

Ufford said the shutters notion had been studied for years but was not practical until breakthroughs in engine computers.

Now the shutters could be opened or closed based not just on engine temperature, but outside air temperature, vehicle speed, air-conditioning demand and other factors.

Though the system sounds complicated, the fuel savings from it and other techniques on the car add up. Ford says the new Focus gets 27 mpg in the city and 37 mpg on the highway with an automatic transmission. The most efficient SFE version gets 28 mpg city, 40 mpg highway.

The Cruze, which uses shutters only on the high-gas-mileage version, achieves 28 city, 42 highway.

Hybrid mileage without cost

The goal with the Cruze Eco was to create a car with the gas mileage of a gas-electric hybrid but without the higher price tag that comes with the hybrid’s expensive batteries and electric motors.

Using shutters allowed GM engineers to come up with a car that can handle the worst-case scenario for engine overheating — pulling a trailer up a Death Valley mountainside on a summer day — yet pick up the benefits of less wind drag by shutting the louvers when days or nights are mild.

Makes sense, says Robert Sawyer, a professor emeritus in engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. He says that in order to meet the tougher government gas mileage regulations, automakers “will need everything they’ve got” to pick up an extra mpg or two. “Anything that is simple” is sure to be part of the formula, he says.

Even though Honda, too, is going to make a high-gas-mileage version of its new 2012 Civic compact, due to begin rolling out April 20, it’s not planning to add shutters, says spokesman Chris Martin. He says the Civic will use less complicated, passive ways to cut wind drag, as well as low-rolling-resistance tires and other tweaks.

BMW says the shutters have worked out well in Europe, where they have been used for about four years on 3 Series sedans with 2.5-liter engines. “We don’t do it on the models in the U.S. because we only have the largest (engine) models here and they need more cooling air,” says Tom Plucinsky, spokesman for BMW North America.

But who knows• No automaker is likely to shut out the idea of shutters when it comes to higher gas mileage.

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