FRANKFURT: Carmakers are singing the praises of new synthetic fuels for combustion engines, even as they prepare to electrify their fleets.
Take Porsche boss Oliver Blume, who talks a lot about the electric cars that are to be released, while at the same time the carmaker is busy investing in the development and production of e-fuels that can be used in conventional gasoline engines.
What may sound like a contradiction could be a smart strategy for Porsche - as well as for the environment.
The e-fuels are produced with the help of electricity from renewable energy sources, water and carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and, unlike conventional fuels, do not release any additional CO2.
Instead, they are climate-neutral in the overall balance, according to the E-Fuel Alliance industry association in Berlin.
And unlike hydrogen for fuel cells, for example, these e-fuels can be distributed comparatively easily, quickly and cheaply through the current network of petrol stations.
There is a catch, unfortunately: They do not burn residue-free.
However, virtually overnight, millions of vehicles would no longer have to be condemned as bad for the environment, just by changing their fuel.
"If you want to sustainably operate existing fleets in the long term, e-fuels are a fundamental component," says Michael Steiner, Porsche's head of development.
Using these fuels would enable carmakers like Porsche to keep offering sports cars with combustion engines that pack a powerful emotional appeal for many. That would include the 911, a model Porsche has excluded from its overall plan to make e-cars half of its business by 2025.
So far, e-fuels have been a theoretical possibility or only available in small, barely affordable quantities for research.
But Porsche, together with Siemens, recently launched a large-scale commercial plant to produce the synthetic fuels in Chile, saying this will "yield the world’s first integrated, commercial, industrial-scale plant for making synthetic, climate-neutral fuels."
Using wind energy, it is expected produce 130,000 litres by next year and more than 500 million litres of fuel annually by 2026.
"The goal of all efforts should be to achieve climate-neutral mobility, as quickly as possible and without too much negative economic impact," says Stefan Pischinger, an engineer at Germany's RWTH Aachen University.
He says this can only happen if all possible technologies are used, all at the same time. "Without e-fuels, we won't be able to be climate-neutral by 2045, and we won't be able to achieve the interim targets either," he says.
That's because of the huge number of internal combustion vehicles, he says, noting that even if the 10 million electric vehicles optimistically forecast for 2030 were registered in Germany, that would be just 22 per cent of the vehicles on the road.
Meanwhile the combustion engine still offers great development potential, particularly in combination with e-fuels, and so could make a major contribution to reducing carbon emissions, he says.
Others disagree.
"E-fuels are a very expensive proposition: unthinkable for passenger cars, and highly likely to be beaten out by fuel cells and battery-electric drives for trucks," say automotive economist Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer.
The new fuels could be used for shipping and aircraft, he says. But for cars, they would be a distraction by oil producers, suppliers and vehicle manufacturers to buy the combustion engine more time.
Alongside the high prices involved, Dudenhoeffer says a further problem with synthetic fuels is energy efficiency.
If you produce diesel using solar power, with a series of energy-intensive processes, and then burn it at an efficiency rate of 40 per cent, the overall efficiency is 15 per cent.
He points out that 85 per cent of the energy is lost: "It doesn't really get any worse than that."
