With COP26 and electric cars dominating the news agenda, synthetic fuels are seen by many as an alternative solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport. Clearly, with ICE cars continuing to be driven beyond 2030, there needs to be a broader answer than simply a route-one electrical fix. But are e-fuels really the solution?
Join us for the next installment of Autocar Business Live as we discuss this and more, delving into all the implications with Zero Petroleum’s Paddy Lowe, Mazda Europe's director of technology research Christian Schultze and Steve Sapsford from SCE.
There are huge consequences to this subject, both with the existing car parc that will still feature modern combustion-engined cars into the 2040s and also the large number of classic car enthusiasts. Porsche estimates that 70% of the cars it has ever produced are still on the road, so it should come as little surprise that the firm has recently announced a major investment in an e-fuels factory in Chile. Will synthetic fuels allow those cars to continue to operate with a cleaner conscience? Or are the inefficiencies around e-fuels too much of a hurdle to overcome?
The free webinar delving into all this and more takes place on 25 November at 1100-1200. You can sign up to watch via the Autocar Business webinar homepage. The webinar will be hosted by Mark Tisshaw from Autocar, as we look to discover how synthetic fuels could provide an alternative to the electric revolution.
Audience members will also be able to submit questions during the event, which will be addressed during the webinar, time-permitting.
Autocar Business is our industry-focused brand, which provides news and insight into the business of the automotive world.
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The ''many people" you refer to who support synthetic petrol are pretty much exclusively those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo: oil companies, producers of combustion engines, and people for whom the smell and noise of a petrol engine are more important than the lives of their grandchildren. "Carbon neutral" fuels are a diversionary scam, and will be looked on very harshly by history. The sooner we see the light on this and move on, the better.
It would make a lot of sense to convert old cars into EVs, as is currently being done with many classic vehicles. Then you also get rid of air pollution, as well as CO2.
On the subject of Hydrogen, it’s worth listening to the ‘Hydrogen 101’ episode of the Bloomberg Switched-On podcast. For example, most hydrogen is currently made from Natural Gas and for every 1kg of Hydrogen, 9kg of CO2 is produced. Also fuel cell cars are at least 50% less efficient than battery electric cars.
Converting old cars into EVs makes "a lot of sense"? Hardly. Apart from losing the character of such vehicles, you would probably also severely comproise the dynamics seeing as the cars were never designed to house batteries and the substantial weight penalties that they bring with them.
Moreover, BEVs are still currently quite harmful to the environment, despite the sheer amount of money that has been invested in their development. Quoting from the paper 'Life Cycle Assessment in the automotive sector: a comparative case study of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and electric car', it is stated that:"...the use of fossil energy carriers for electricity production [as is currently the case, with little sign of it changing any time soon] can strongly reduce the environmental benefit of BEVs and even lead to an increase in GHG emissions; in this case only local pollution decrease can be achieved and the emissions are moved from the road to specific areas rather than achieving an effective reduction on a global scale."It is also stated that "the manufacturing of BEV has a greater load with respect to ICEV, especially for the large use of metals, chemicals and energy required by specific components of the electric powertrain such as the high-voltage battery. The other considered environmental impacts (acidification, human toxicity, particulate matter, photochemical ozone formation and resource depletion) result higher for the BEV than the ICEV, primarily due to the major environmental loads of powertrain construction and manufacturing."
And yet, you keep saying that BEVs are our salvation. I think not. Actually, it is factually not the case, not just my opinion.
Despite the comparatively limited amount of money that has been invested in FCEV development, the technology looks promising and I'd expect the hydrogen production processes to become more efficient over time. These synthetic e-fuels are also quite interesting, since they promise to substantially reduce emissions without much impact to the power produced by an engine...in fact, they could actually increase it.
In conclusion, I'd suggest opening your mind a-bit...or do you have a vested interest in seeing BEVs thrive?
That bit made me laugh the most, both Honda and Mercedes have now pulled out of fool cell cars. The money wasted on hydrogen cars has been massive, hydrogen is just to inefficient and expensive.
Honda and Mercedes have probably halted development due to the huge push by governments to support BEVs, e.g. through the installation of charging points; in comparison, there are very few hydrogen filling stations, which puts potential buyers off. Consequently, FCEVs are going to sell slowly, at least in the short to medium term; in fact, the main reason that Honda pulled out of the market was due to slow sales.
Moreover, not all manufacturers have the luxury of investing in multiple technologies...so, as businesses, they have to focus on whatever is most likely to be profitable - which, presently, are BEVs due to the reasons mentioned above.
However, all of this is mostly applicable to passenger cars; trucks, for instance, are a different story - Mercedes, for example, is actually researching hydrogen fuel cells for trucks and has started testing a prototype earlier this year. If hydrogen was so bad - or BEVs so great - I think it would make sense for them to use their battery tech on trucks too...and yet, they aren't.
Mercedes do make a BEV truck... the eActros
No, next question