E-Fuels: Porsche starts production
Together with project partners, the sports car manufacturer has opened a pilot plant for the production of synthetic fuels. In this way, Porsche wants to join the traffic turnaround and enable climate-friendly use of combustion cars.
On around 270 days a year, the wind blows at full force at the southern tip of Chile - the perfect place for wind turbines to produce green energy. This is precisely why Porsche has commissioned a pilot plant for the production of e-fuels there, in Punta Arenas. Together with international project partners, including the Chilean operating company Highly Innovative Fuels (HIF), the Stuttgart-based car company wants to invest in research and large-scale production of this versatile fuel. Because it stands out from traditional fossil fuels thanks to its good environmental potential.
Around 130,000 litres per year are to be produced in the pilot phase. A production volume that is expected to increase to around 55 million litres per year by the middle of the decade. For this to happen, however, HIF and Porsche will have to significantly increase the capacity of their plant, as well as get enough energy from the wind turbines to cover the enormous demand for electricity. Without the guarantee that the production process will be powered by clean electricity, the ecological value of such fuels is otherwise lost.
A potentially undesirable outcome. Even if electric cars, with a CO2 saving potential of 87%, continue to perform better than e-fuels. In contrast to pure electromobility, which usually requires conversions for internal combustion vehicles, e-fuels have the clear advantage of being easy to use. According to estimates by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), synthetic fuels are "fully suitable for everyday use today". Especially when repeated tests and pilot projects show that they "work for old and new cars as well as for commercial vehicles or locomotives".
Accordingly, e-fuels are increasingly considered to be the greener alternatives to diesel and petrol engines, which will still be on the road today and even after the end of the combustion engine in the next decade. According to Porsche itself, it has invested more than 100 million US dollars in the development and provision of e-fuels to date - including the investment of 75 million dollars in HIF for the research and production of its own e-fuels.
That the role of such fuels will continue to increase - for Porsche as well as for many other car manufacturers - to make the still many internal combustion engines more environmentally friendly seems to be the emerging trend in the industry. Equally likely is continued investment by various corporations to bring new electric or hydrogen vehicles to market. It is imperative that the existing regulations, starting with emission standards, be adapted to the main protagonists of the transport turnaround.