Ford plans to do away with fuel filler caps

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — The gas cap, long left sitting on trunk lids or dangling from cars as they leave gas stations, will become a thing of the past on many Ford Motor Co. models in the coming years.

At an automotive industry conference near Lake Michigan, the company announced Wednesday that the venerable cap will disappear on its new 2008 Lincoln MKS full-sized car model, and eventually all Ford models will be without them.

Replacing the caps will be a flap that opens under pressure from the gas pump nozzle. The flap will fit snugly to the nozzle to stop fumes from escaping, company officials said.

“It eliminates the inconvenience of forgetting to put your gas cap back on after refueling,” said Mark Fields, Ford executive vice president and president of the Americas.

The new cap came from Ford’s NASCAR racing experience and has been used on the Ford GT sports car, Fields said.

Eventually Ford will get rid of the caps on all of its vehicles, although it has no timetable to do that, said Said Deep, a company spokesman.

The change likely will be made when models are updated, but could be retrofitted onto existing models, Deep said.