Porsche pushes for e-fuels to keep combustion cars alive after 2035

Porsche believes that the use of synthetic e-fuels will become more widespread and that they will play an important role in protecting the environment by powering existing and new combustion engine vehicles.

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The German automaker is currently operating an e-fuel production plant in Chile powered by renewable energy. The plant produces e-fuels for the Porsche Supercup series, and can also produce fuel for older models. In fact, Porsche originally built the e-fuel plant to keep older ICE models on the road longer.

Read: Porsche Supercup series to use synthetic fuels this year

Now, as more politicians and governments realize they can’t just push for electric cars, Porsche development chief Michael Steiner sees the use of synthetic fuels growing.

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“Since we started the project, more and more people – customers and politicians – have realised that you can’t just push for electric cars,” he told Autocar. “That’s the main road, but we have to consider the large number of existing combustion engine cars, which are still growing. Everyone has to gradually replace new cars with electric cars, but we have to be careful about how we replace all the fossil energy we put into our cars, ships, planes and so on.”

Leiters doesn’t think the entire internal combustion industry will suddenly switch to e-fuels. Instead, he thinks “we can mix e-fuels in little by little, gallon by gallon, to replace fossil fuels. It’s about how many tons you replace, not how you do it. We can mix it in first, just like we do biofuels. The important thing is to use less fossil fuels.”

“We have growing support,” he added. “There’s still a long way to go to get this big wheel turning, but if you can push this — and we very much want to push this — by the end of the century, e-fuels could be a significant share of the mix.”

Porsche’s commitment to e-fuels is one of the main reasons why the European Commission has relaxed its stance on internal combustion cars. Originally, the EU was going to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars after 2035, but the EU created an exemption that allows cars running on e-fuels to continue to be sold after that date.

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