Porsche starts e-fuel production, a gas alternative made from water

Porsche AG, a German car maker, specializing in high-performance sports cars, revealed it has started the production of eFuel in Chile. This is an alternative gas for vehicles that was developed with the aim of becoming a seller of environmentally-friendly fuel.

In the initial phase, Porche’s is planning to produce about 130,000 liters of eFuel per year. And for a start, this gas made from water in Chile will be used in lighthouse projects, including the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup and at Porsche Experience Centers.

Once the pilot phase is completed, the carmaker will scale up its production and take the project up by boosting the production to an estimated 55 million liters per year by the middle of the decade. After two years, Porche will increase its capacity to 550 million liters.

As per CNBC, the luxury sports car manufacturer and its partners have officially started producing the climate-neutral eFuel with the goal of replacing gasoline with traditional internal combustion engines. It said this week that the commercial manufacturing is taking place at a plant in Chile.

Porsche will be using the newly-produced eFuel for motorsports and its performance experience hubs. In the years to come, the company will expand the list to add more uses for its eco-friendly fuel that is produced via a complex process using water, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen. Then again, it was noted that vehicles will still have to use oil to lubricate the engine.

“Porsche is committed to a double-e path: e-mobility and eFuels as complementary technology. Using eFuels reduces CO2 emissions,” Porsche AG’s member of the executive board for procurement, Barbara Frenkel, said in a press release. “Looking at the entire traffic sector, the industrial production of synthetic fuels should keep being pushed forward worldwide. With the eFuels pilot plant, Porsche is playing a leading role in this development.”

Porsche’s member of the executive board for development and research, Michael Steiner, also added that the potential of this kind of fuel is huge.

“There are currently more than 1.3 billion vehicles with combustion engines worldwide. Many of these will be on the roads for decades to come, and eFuels offer the owners of existing cars a nearly carbon-neutral alternative,” he said. “As the manufacturer of high-performance, efficient engines, Porsche has a wide range of know-how in the field of fuels.”

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