The German automotive industry has won its battle to be allowed a little leeway from the European Union’s (EU) ban on new internal combustion engines (ICE) after 2035, but a concession on so-called e-fuels will likely only benefit a few supercars.
The e-fuel winners will probably be the drivers of some incredibly expensive versions of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche. At this point, those e-fuels are commercially viable and, according to Reuters BreakingViews, cost about four times the wholesale value of gasoline.
“Combustion engines will live to death,” said Lisa Jucca, a columnist for BreakingViews.
Investment bank UBS said it will enable the likes of Porsche to keep iconic models like the 911 running with a combustion engine, but not much more.
“We consider e-fuels as a mass-market generation because the production of e-fuels is an inefficient use of blank energy. In addition, the price of e-fuels is competitive, at least for the time being,” UBS said in a report.
“BEVs (battery electric vehicles) will most likely be the cheapest generation until 2035,” UBS said.
To make e-fuel, carbon dioxide must be captured from industrial processes or the air and mixed with green hydrogen.
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has doubts about the green credentials of e-fuels.
“I think e-fuels will be another generation direction that will develop. The industry will have to prove that it is carbon neutral, from carbon capture on the one hand and engine carbon emissions on the other,” Tavares quoted Automotive News Europe as saying.
Tavares speaking at the Stellantis “Freedom of Mobility” forum, created after its withdrawal from the Association of European Automobile Manufacturers.
BreakingViews said e-fuel doesn’t have much luck with sedans and SUVs and is better suited to other uses.
“Cost and energy scarcity suggest e-fuels may be best used in sectors that are harder to convert to electric engines, like trucks, shipping or planes,” BreakingViews said.
Al Bedwell, director of Global Powertrain at LMC Automotive, doubted that enough e-fuel would ever be manufactured to be viable for use in general automobiles, and agreed that aviation or shipping would be more suitable.
“Yes, e-fuels can play a vital role in the light-vehicle sector in Europe in 2035 and beyond, but they may not be vital. Decarbonizing the internal combustion engine fleet through e-fuel seems appealing, but it will be carried out naturally, as BEVs upgrade ICE cars: the ZEV 2035 target has been selected in such a way that by 2050 this procedure will be complete,” Bedwell said in a report.
“Right now, e-fuels are a hot topic, offering a way for an industry undergoing enormous change to get some politically useful concessions from regulators. But the evidence today points to e-fuels in Europe’s light vehicle sector being backed into a very small corner, or not getting off the ground at all,” Bedwell said.
Germany’s veto of the EU’s ban on ICE in 2035 came after dissension within the ruling coalition. The conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) called for so-called artificial fuels or e-fuels to be allowed after 2035. German industry unions also called for the ICE ban to be relaxed. They claim that many thousands of jobs in Germany would have been threatened if the blanket ICE ban had been implemented. Italy and Poland also opposed it.
According to the organic strain Transport
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