In the simplest terms e-fuel is gasoline made entirely from clean energy (wind and water in the case of the Porsche version) that can be used in any internal combustion engine on the planet.
It requires no mining or burning of fossils to make but instead removes CO2 from the atmosphere during its manufacture, hence why Porsche refers to certain brands as ‘almost carbon neutral’ fuels. For the planet, indeed, for all of us, that certainly makes e-fuels excellent news, right? That’s right.
It’s made by splitting the hydrogen from the oxygen you get in plain old water (H2O) using a machine called an electrolyser that’s powered entirely by wind, in Porsche’s case powered by a giant Siemens turbine in the southernmost tip of Chile, where the wind blows really hard, All the time. We’re talking here about the Straights of Magellan and Cape Horn which were once notoriously dangerous to negotiate.
The hydrogen harnessed from this process is then mixed with CO2 extracted from the air through a radical new process called ‘air capture technology’ to create e-methanol.
This e-methanol then goes through a final process called MTG (methanol to gasoline) that has been developed by Exxon-Mobil, where 93 octane crude fuel is produced. This can then be raised to whatever octane rating you require with final additives. And not a single fossil was burned during the entire process.
The resulting e-fuel can be used in anything from carbureted Rover V8 cars to Porsche Panamera Turbo S to commercial passenger jets. It is so flexible in its potential uses.
In a car that emits less than about 100g/km it is actually closer to carbon negative than carbon neutral because the CO2 released from the atmosphere during manufacture almost exceeds the amount of CO2 released when it burns. So in theory that makes e-fuel a huge win.
But inevitably there are caveats. For starters, it costs a lot of money right now, especially since it’s not in circulation yet. The shiny new plant I recently visited in Chile – the first of its kind anywhere in the world – can produce just 130,000 liters of e-fuel in a year along with 350 tonnes of e-methanol. So at the moment the notional price of £40-45 ($72-81) a gallon is pretty ridiculous because you can’t actually buy any of it. However.
But like any commodity, price is always relative to supply, and the whole idea of Porsche’s involvement with e-fuel is not to make or sell the stuff – it makes and sells cars, not fuel – but rather to be a charismatic front man. for technology that is, in fact, being funded and developed by the same energy companies that have spent billions over the years making conventional fuels.
The main financial stake in the Porsche plant (operated by Highly Innovative Fuels Global – HIF) was provided by a Chilean mining company called Andes Mining Energy, while the most expensive technology in the plant itself – the MTG system – was provided by Exxon Mobil. So in some ways e-fuel is like conventional fuel but cleanly remade, then remarketed with a sexy new Porsche badge on the barrel.
But whoever succeeds, and whichever company ends up making the most money from it, e-fuels should be accepted as a good thing overall. It would be a very good thing if Porsche succeeded in persuading the world’s lawmakers en masse to enact the law, rather than against it, in the short to medium term.
Because what Porsche is trying to say here is; Look, we can’t ignore this technology anymore because for the next 15-20 years, the internal combustion engine is here to stay, like it or not. And right now the infrastructure for widespread electrification is not there worldwide, and won’t realistically be there for at least another decade, maybe longer, which means there’s a huge time gap that needs to be plugged if we’re really going to will be a carbon neutral world by 2050.
After all, it is estimated that over a billion ICE vehicles will still will be on our roads by 2030, and will still need fuel to run – but if they use e-fuel instead of conventional petrol, a lot less bad stuff will end up in the atmosphere between now and then.
And in case you’re still wondering, it’s not what comes out of the tailpipe that’s the problem. The process of making the fuel that powers our cars, planes, trucks and ships is the real issue. The main difference is (as already informed) the manufacture of e-fuel is clean; conventional gasoline production is anything but.
Ultimately the vehicle will emit the same amount of CO2 used on e-fuel as on traditional fuel, and it will use the same amount of fuel as well. Same g/km and L/100km numbers. But the creation of the fuel in the first place is where we will go wrong.
E-fuels, synthetic fuels, bio-mass fuels – call them what you like, they all end up with pretty much the same result – are certainly a big part of the short to mid-term answer. Porsche’s main claim to fame with its e-fuel is that it is faster and easier to scale up and produce on an industrial scale.
For anyone who enjoys driving a classic car guilt-free for 20-30 years and beyond, e-fuel can be a far-reaching long-term solution. If it really takes off, it will be usable and affordable almost forever.
And perhaps the best news of all is that, finally, our lawmakers may be just beginning to understand, too. On March 2, the UK’s Transport Select Committee published a paper advising the government to do whatever it can, as quickly as possible, to accelerate the mass production and use of e-fuels in the car and aviation industries, and take the good ones. take a long look at how e-fuel can be adopted to work in transport and delivery at the same time.
It’s not a momentous moment but it shows that our decision makers are at least listening to people who know what they’re talking about.
Ultimately that’s Porsche’s involvement with e-fuel; asking global politicians and industry to wake up, listen, and hopefully do the right thing, now, before it’s too late.
Can e-fuel save words? Not by myself, no. But it’s a good place to start, because we’ve almost run out of options otherwise.
Drive the Panamera Turbo S on e-fuel
So how does it feel to drive Porsche’s e-fuel twin-turbo V8 Panamera – the same, different, better or worse than the same car that uses regular unleaded?
Once I toured the factory in Chile and was stunned, stunned, amazed and absolutely petrified of the science behind it in equal measure, Porsche handed me the keys to the Turbo S and invited me to drive it along the famous car. End of The World Road, after filling it with 50 liters (so about $500) of e-fuel. So I then drove it several hundred miles.
The scenery is amazing, the roads are endlessly long and straight, and don’t look very good most of the time. I saw Pumas and Condors (seriously) and drove for hours across some of the bleakest and most untouched landscapes you can visit.
Every time I stopped for a comfortable rest or just to get out and look around, the Panamera’s doors would swing open in the wind. Because it is there all the time, it never stops.
That’s the reason why Porsche and HIF and Exxon Mobil and all the other investors in e-fuels have come down here in the first place – to take advantage of wind power that never goes out.
And unless they all collaborate collaboratively on a massive scale, it works. The Panamera drives the same way on e-fuel that it has filled up on the first day at the factory as it does on conventional unleaded it plus hundreds of miles away on the second day. There is zero difference.
That felt like a major realization at the time but only because there was no significant change. Same fuel consumption, same emissions, same throttle feel, same car.
Except that on the first day the Panamera uses fuel whose production has released most of the CO2 that the V8 then puts back into the atmosphere, and on the second day it’s a one-way street.
That’s a potentially life-changing difference, which might mean you can still execute a U-Turn and change our trajectory even at this late stage, even on the Ruta del Fin del Mundo. Assuming, that is, that our big rule makers and industry – all of us, to be fair – are willing to compromise a little and, for once, do the right thing.
We got ourselves into this mess in the first place. Now it’s up to us – and them – to make things right. And e-fuel is part of the solution.