From TechCrunch: After years of promises and millions in investments, Porsche today pumped the first gallons of its fully synthetic fuel into a car. That car? A 911, of course.
Porsche has been talking about eFuels since 2020, when it made a €20 million investment into a project with Siemens Energy to create a pilot plant in Punta Arenas, Chile. The house that Ferdinand built then backed that up with a further $75 million investment earlier this year, taking a 12.5% stake in HIF Global, the holding company for these eFuel production efforts.
EFuels are meant to be carbon-neutral alternates, allowing legacy vehicles to continue operating in the face of growing restrictions on carbon output from passenger vehicles. However, it’s all theory at this point. While bans for the sale of internal combustion vehicles are already on the books in many places, starting in 2035 in California and the EU, globally, no exemptions have yet been granted for eFuels. The EU plans to draft a proposal for “CO2 neutral fuels” and whether they may prove exempt, but that may apply only to commercial vehicles.
Michael Steiner, member of the executive board at Porsche, hopes such an exemption would cover eFuels use in his company’s cars: “This is still in progress, but at least our expectation is that we could use such eFuel also in passenger cars, especially Porsche cars. This is expectation, but this is not finalized today.”
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