Many thought that the concept of electronic fuels would only allow owners to keep their old Porsche’s on the road, and could completely save the internal combustion engine from extinction.
After all, why worry about the possibility of “range anxiety” and nighttime charging when you can stay replenishing your car at any fuel station with almost bonus-free fuel?
Also, according to Bosch, a company that invests in the field, can it do it for only £1 per litre?
Also for brands, the prospect of artificial fuels would make them abandon wholesale electrification systems in favor of a much more cost-effective alternative.
So why don’t we communicate more about artificial electronic fuels?
Synthetic e-fuels are, in theory, almost completely carbon neutral. Porsche’s Chilean task would see, for example, extracting hydrogen from water using an electrolysis procedure fed through an on-site wind farm.
The carbon had to be extracted from the environment and, in a methanol synthesis reactor, switched to methanol.
The mixture of hydrogen and methanol would create a combustible hydrocarbon that could be used in an internal combustion engine with little or no modification.
Porsche said that in the future, the Porsche Supercup racing series will be powered entirely through artificial electronic fuels manufactured at its Chilean plant. With 70 percent of the cars the company has never made on the road yet, it says e-fuels are an option that will allow them to stay there, highlighting the prospective use of fuel for other classics in the future.
Porsche has also indicated it will use the fuel to force cars into its Porsche centers, and the consortium in charge of the allocation in Chile said it plans to increase production to 55 million liters by 2024 and 500 million liters by 2026.
Society seems to have remained a bit silent about prospects recently, according to some reports.
Synthetic e-fuels have a huge number of upsides and will almost certainly have a future, though there are enough issues to suggest it may not go so far as to “save” the internal combustion engine in the face of battery-electric vehicles.
The main challenge with electronic fuels is economic. Some 500 million litres of e-fuel is just a drop in the ocean compared to the 45-50 billion litres of petrol and diesel that are fuelled a year in the UK alone; The United States uses 467 billion liters a year.
According to an eFuel alliance, this is not such a big challenge because it does not foresee a sudden transfer to artificial fuels, but the slow incorporation of artificial to the gas mixture, say 4% until 2025, 12% until 2030 and one hundred consistent with percentage until 2050. The organisation also said that eventually, artificial fuels could charge between £1. 15 and £1. 87 per litre.
The existing average charge per litre of petrol is £1. 49 per litre and is expected to rise sharply in the coming months, so the e-fuel prediction looks excellent.
However, some other source, the International Council on Clean Transport (ICCT), an American non-profit organisation, claims this is completely unreal and charges between £2. 50 and £3. 35 per litre until 2030. While £3 per litre while petrol wouldn’t seem unreasonable for small-scale amateur applications, for those who do a lot of miles, it will definitely seem excessive.
The fact is that while artificial electronic fuels are usually carbon-free to produce, they are not carbon-free at the point of use; it is also before taking into account the carbon rate of shipping. While road transport in some territories could disappear in the next decade or two, shipping is likely to be far from carbon-free for some time.
While artificial e-fuels may be about 85% less carbon-intensive than existing liquid fuels, it’s still not zero, which, given the scale of the climate crisis, some say isn’t smart enough.
Another question arises regarding the hydrogen needed to make artificial fuels: how environmentally friendly is it?True, Porsche’s Chilean mission will extract its hydrogen from wind power, but most of the hydrogen that is produced lately in the world is generated from fossil fuel energy. .
Increasing the production of electrolysis created by green hydrogen would require gigantic amounts of energy beyond the existing infrastructure capacities of most countries.
Britain’s blank shipping advocacy group, Transport and Environment, claims that artificial electronic fuels have an energy density 4 times lower than batteries and, according to their analysis, if 10% of all cars and vans in the UK used e-fuels, they would need 3 times more renewable energy than if the same number of battery-powered vehicles.
Ultimately, mass adoption of fuels can also be hampered by a lack of customer demand.
With a number of governments around the world, including the UK, making plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars until 2030, demand for old fuels may fall into anything other than heritage applications.
One of the most important court cases about electric cars right now is their relative charge compared to internal combustion cars, largely due to the charge of their batteries. Models until 2028, with the purchase price falling further thereafter.
If this is the case, in the late 2030s or early 2040s, for many resistance fighters, the economy of an internal combustion engine as a daily driving force would probably no longer accumulate. be of interest to some recreational users, such as antique car enthusiasts and motorcyclists. But for this specific niche, e-fuels can also be vital.