A lot of car manufacturers are championing the electric car as the future of motoring. EVs don’t rely on fossil fuels to move around, which means they have the potential to drastically lower our global CO2 emissions – but that’s only if they’re supported by the correct green energy infrastructure.
Because of this, lots of car brands have said that they’ll stop building internal combustion cars within the next decade and throw their full weight behind EV production. Kia is planning to launch 14 new electric vehicles by 2027, while Fiat says it’ll go electric-only by the end of 2023.
The aggressive electrification strategies of these big-name brands suggests the internal combustion engine will soon be consigned to the scrap heap. However, there are some very talented engineers working on new synthetic fuels (also known as eFuels) which promise to extend the life of the petrol engine – and do it in a way that meets our climate targets.
Synthetic fuels use captured carbon dioxide from the air as the basis for a chemical compound with identical properties to normal petrol and diesel. Petrol is just a combination of carbon and hydrogen atoms – so, if you know the correct combination, you can make it a lab using the raw materials.
Who are the main players in the field?
Porsche is giving eFuels a good go. The company has teamed up with Siemens and a couple of energy companies to build a new eFuel plant in Chile. The group has already broken ground on the facility, which is scheduled to produce its first batch of carbon-neutral fuel before the end of 2022.
Porsche has set aside €20 million (around £17 million) to fund the factory’s construction. The German government also sees the benefit of the technology and has thrown €8 million (roughly £6.8 million) at the project.
The facility will have two main areas. The plant is situated in an area of Chile with very strong winds, so Porsche is constructing an on-site wind farm to generate the electricity required to keep the plant running. There’ll also be an array of enormous filters which will harvest CO2 from the atmosphere and, after a bit of processing, provide the main raw material – carbon.
The electricity generated by the wind farm will be used to separate hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a process called electrolysis. The hydrogen gathered by this process will then be combined in the correct ratio with the carbon filtered from the atmosphere to create synthetic fuel.
Porsche says its new eFuel plant will produce 130,000 litres of carbon-neutral fuel in its first year of service alone, which will be used to power the company’s racing cars and Experience Centre cars. Production will ramp up soon after to a capacity of 55 million litres per year by 2024 and 550 million per year litres by 2026.
That sounds like a game-changing amount of fuel, but it’s little more than a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things. Figures from the Petrol Retailers’ Association show that the UK alone consumed more than 40 billion litres of petrol and diesel in 2020.
Porsche isn’t really focused on fixing the fuel crisis, though. At least not yet. Instead, the company is trying to prove how reports on the death of the internal combustion engine have been dramatized, and the carbon emissions produced by petrol and diesel cars can be offset with some clever engineering and a bit of lateral thinking.
Michael Steiner, Member of the Executive Board for Porsche’s Research and Development department, said: “Porsche was founded with pioneering spirit. That’s what drives us, we thrive on innovation. We also see ourselves as pioneers when it comes to renewable fuels, and we want to drive development forward.
“This fits in with our clear overall sustainability strategy. It means that Porsche as a whole can be net CO2 neutral as early as 2030. Fuels produced with renewable energy can make a contribution to this. Our icon, the 911, is particularly suited to the use of eFuels. But so are our much-loved historic vehicles, because around 70 per cent of all Porsche sports cars ever built are still on the road today.”
Steiner also says that Porsche’s eFuel programme could have a significant environmental impact. “Our tests with renewable fuels are going very successfully,” he said. “eFuels will make it possible to reduce fossil CO2 emissions in combustion engines by up to 90 percent. Among other things, we’ll be using the first fuel from Chile in our Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup racing cars from 2022.”
Porsche recently showcased the potential of its synthetic fuel by gate-crashing the GP Ice Race in Zell am See, Austria. The company raced a couple of Cayman GT4 RS sports cars (pictured above) around the ice track, with both being powered by the new renewable fuel.
What are the benefits of using eFuels?
As mentioned above, synthetic fuels have the potential to extend the useful life of the internal combustion engine. Because they’re made using carbon captured from the air, eFuels are completely carbon neutral. Once the fuels are burned in an engine, the net amount of carbon in the atmosphere remains the same as it was before the fuel was manufactured, which is better for the planet.
Also, synthetic fuels can be rolled out using existing infrastructure. Conventional petrol stations could simply switch their supply from crude oil-based fuels to eFuels, without any changes to their pumps and storage tanks. That saves a lot of money and buys us some time while we get our EV charging infrastructure off the ground.
eFuels will also make older cars more eco-friendly. In terms of lifetime carbon emissions (considering the impact of both producing the vehicle and running it), it’s already better for the planet to keep an old car on the road rather than buying a new one – regardless of whether it’s powered by petrol or electricity. However, eFuels have the potential to improve on this by making every mile a classic car covers completely carbon neutral where local emissions are concerned.
