Porsche hopes they can slow down the extinction of ICE vehicles!

[botsapper]

While Porsche is scrambling developing new electric models, Porsche is also investing and believes that synthetic fuels can greatly reduce CO2 output and NOx emissions. A clean alternative to batteries and EVs, eFuels can be clean enough to reduce CO2 by 85%! They are confident enough that we don't have to give up internal combustion engines and allow generations of enthusiasts' cars can stay on the road - that is still good for the environment. Porsche wants to preserve the combustion-fueled driving brand experience. They have partnered with Siemens Energy to produce synthetic methanol power from using sustainable energy - from Chilean wind farms. The non-fossil fuel sourced synthetic climate-neutral fuels are then converted into gasoline, using a refining process licensed by ExxonMobil.
https://www.exxonmobilchemical.com/e...ynthetic-fuels

However many governments and large car manufacturers are quickly legislating out and eliminating the use and production of vehicles with gasoline/diesel engines - making research and producing 'Green Fuels' to be futile.

https://www.rechargenews.com/transit...ile/2-1-923389

https://www.designnews.com/automotiv...ens-green-fuel

[redpoint5]

Cars could just be made to run on ethanol. I'm not advocating for that, because the amount of cropland that would need to be dedicated to it would be far more devastating to the environment than just burning the cheap stuff in the ground.

We'll go electric; slowly at first, and then all of a sudden.

[freebeard]

This is good news. I've got a 1/43rd 356 Speedster (red w/ black Glasspar top) in front of my monitor.

Wasn't this what the Germans got bombed for in WWII? ...maybe not:

ExxonMobil’s methanol to gasoline (MTG) process selectively converts methanol to a single fungible liquid fuel and a small LPG stream. The liquid product is conventional gasoline with virtually no sulfur and low benzene, which can be sold as-is or blended with ethanol, methanol or with petroleum refinery stocks.

I wonder about Cool Planet, so I went looking. They're mentioned in this paywalled report

Green Gasoline Market Overview, Merger and Acquisitions , Drivers, Restraints and Industry Forecast by 2027 : Reports and Data

Green gasoline, also known as bio-gasoline or renewable gasoline, is a biomass-derived fuel through a variety of biological, thermal, and chemical processes, which is suitable for use in industrial and automotive applications such as in spark-ignition engines. The fuel meets the ASTM D4814 specification in the U.S. and EN 228 in Europe. Green gasoline fuel is used in vehicles that are aimed to run on this fuel without requiring engine modifications and can use the existing petroleum fuel pipeline structures and retail distribution systems.

[serialk11r]

The question is why hasn't this been done if it's actually cost competitive, right? Methanol is very cheap.

You can buy toluene and butanol which cars can use with no fuel system modifications at around $8 per gallon, which is sort of reasonable for a recreational vehicle. Using straight ethanol or methanol would be even cheaper than running gasoline, after the necessary fuel system upgrades.

[Stubby79]

The whole ICE-less mandate thing has me wondering if manufacturers will find a loop hole for enthusiasts...like selling engine-less gliders that you can then go to another company and buy an engine to put in to it...or an electric motor, if that's your preference (and their way of legally selling them).

[redpoint5]

Most politicians and those who support them are dimwitted miscreants. They skirt around the problem, addressing symptoms instead because they are either too stupid, too cowardly, or too corrupt to face it directly.

Banning ICE engines to solve global warming is like banning 2nd hand smoking to cure emphysema.

[JSH]

The problem is efficiency. From two EU reports:

According to German Energy Agency report : The potential of electricity-based fuels for low-emission transport in the EU

The overall energy efficiency of electricity use in battery electric vehicles is 4-6 times, and via hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles about 2 times higher than e-fuels in combustion engines including grid integration.

https://www.dena.de/fileadmin/dena/D..._in_the_EU.pdf

They think eFuel will be still be important for the transition and also for aviation, shipping, and freight hauling where batteries don't have the energy density.


Another report called: What role is there for electrofuel technologies in European transport’s low carbon future? Says:

Drop-in electrofuel production is not as energy efficient as direct supply of electricity for electric drive vehicles. For instance, Transport and Environment (2017) state that the direct supply of electricity for battery charging delivers an overall 73% efficiency from electricity production to energy use in transport, while use of hydrogen in a fuel cell vehicle delivers only 22% energy efficiency and drop-in electrofuels deliver only 13% overall efficiency. Still, electrification cannot meet all transport energy requirements, and even in passenger vehicles it is likely to take decades to eliminate internal combustion engine vehicles from the fleet.

https://www.transportenvironment.org...ls_final_0.pdf

[redpoint5]

Converting energy types is inefficient.

In my estimation, plug-in hybrids is an excellent bridge technology. My dinky 15 mile range plug-in Prius was doing about 70% of miles on electrons, and not lugging around a larger battery than necessary. I'd say this was a suboptimal size, but the RAV4 Prime is getting pretty darn close to optimal.

I understand the desire to eliminate the complexity and cost of integrating 2 powertrains, but the benefits seem to outweigh the negatives at the moment.

[Hersbird]

Getting rid of ICE cars also means getting rid of all crude oil based products. You can't just say you aren't going to use the biggest product of refining but still use all the other products. You would end up with a lake of gasoline and diesel.