- Porsche aims to scale production of synthetic fuel
- Porsche R&D boss believes synthetic fuel will play a large role in reducing emissions
- Ferrari’s counting on synthetic fuel while Toyota, Mazda, and Subaru investigate whether e-fuels can keep ICE alive
Porsche is confident that synthetic “e-fuels” will displace a significant amount of conventional gasoline use by the end of the decade, research and development boss Michael Steiner said in a recent interview with Autocar.
In 2022, Porsche opened a synthetic fuel pilot plant in Chile that produces a gasoline alternative by combining hydrogen with carbon dioxide captured from the air, with the entire process powered by renewable energy. Steiner told Autocar that this plant will serve as a “role model” as production of synthetic fuels is scaled up.
Haru Oni synthetic fuel pilot plant in Punta Arenas, Chile
Because while Porsche originally envisioned synthetic fuel primarily for specialized applications like racing and vintage cars, Steiner also believes it will play a big role in reducing emissions from ordinary vehicles, alongside electrification.
“We see this as a great additional strategy to e-mobility and we think we could really help the environment in a faster manner, because we could do something for existing cars,” Steiner said, noting that while EV sales continue to fluctuate, new internal-combustion cars are still being sold and will remain in use for some time.
2024 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup race car being filled with e-fuel
Porsche has said that capturing CO2 from the air effectively cancels out the emissions from burning its synthetic fuels in combustion engines, but a 2021 study from environmental group Transport & Environment estimated that synthetic fuels cause just as much pollution as regular gasoline. Synthetic fuels also require similar infrastructure to fossil fuels for production and distribution, making their use inherently less efficient than charging an EV.
It’s also still unclear whether synthetic fuels can be made price competitive with conventional fossil fuels, although that may not be a concern for Porsche, or Ferrari, which is also investigating synthetic fuels as a potential savior for its high-end supercars. However, synthetic fuels are also among the technologies being jointly investigated by Toyota, Subaru, and Mazda to keep combustion engines alive—perhaps in more humble vehicles.
Content Disclaimer and Copyright Notice
Content Disclaimer
The content provided on this website is sourced from various RSS feeds and other publicly available sources. We strive to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information, and we always provide source links to the original content. However, we are not responsible for the content’s accuracy or any changes made to the original sources after the information is aggregated on our site.
Fair Use and Copyright Notice
This website may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
