Featured Porsche building an e-fuel plant...

Nonsense is not resolved by volume. Still, even predictable results deserve a chance at a Nobel prize.

Bob Wilson

 

This is what I am taking about - a future that caters to vintage vehicles, Hydrogen vehicles, BEV vehicles as well as Hybrids. Not one choice, multiply choices for what works best for the individual. What a great concept .

 

I don't think there is any magic here, but it does do away with hydrogen myth. Methanol made from electricity, water, and co2 is well understood. Exxon probably improved the process of turning that to gasoline. The problem is cost of renewable methanol for flex fuel is much less expensive than renewable synthetic gas. And renewable synthetic gasoline is more expensive than gasoline made from oil, but less expensive than renewable hydrogen (even when fuel cell efficiency is considered.

Put the renewable methanol or renewable synthetic gasoline in a phev and cost of the fuel is not that important. If a classic car only does a couple of thousand miles a year or less, it really doesn't matter that synthetic renewable gas costs $6/gallon.

 

iirc - the cost for synth / e-fuel is expensive compared to running that same energy necessary to put energy in a battery. Perhaps it might work as ICE Airplane Fuel in a pinch. Batteries certainly can't do everything but if there's a cheaper alternative?
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The texas plant seems to be at the proper scale and location to most economically produce e-methanol the start of the process to make jet A or gasoline. It is going to be located at a place that can opt in to buy cheap wind electricity, and probably can over build the hydrogen production and storage tanks to take the wind when the grid least needs it, stabilizing the grid and lowering costs. I doubt there is enough volume to make conversion of the methanol to gasoline economic, but maybe this gets e-gasoline to around $8/gallon. People may be willing to pay that for a small percentage, and as a bonus maybe we can get rid of the ethanol mandate. If gasoline in $3/gallon and this is $8/gallon and you replace 10% with the green stuff it would only make it $3.50/gallon not much more than E10 but a car would go 3% further and it would be all gasoline.

 

I wonder what they'll do for distribution?

 

I guess I didn't know about them making other fuels.

I mean I know they have international distribution for hazardous fluids; every automaker does for their dealer support network.

But fuel is a significantly larger quantity than most of the others.

Also there's a massive marketing opportunity here, lots of old Porsche-owning codgers would love to make "jerry-can" jokes.

 

Good thing Porsche is not wasting their engineering and capital on making desirable electric vehicles.

"Quand l'ennemi fait un faux mouvement , il faut se garder de l'interrompre" - Napoleon
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I remember walking across the parking lot early in the morning, the sun had just risen behind the building, when I thought, "Gosh, I hope we don't win that logistic contract." I stopped and realized my career with them had just come to an end.

Less than a year earlier, the Research and Development funding had been spent (wasted!) on two, huge screen, unix workstations kept in a limited access room for "logistics." Our expertise in automated test equipment (ATE) was being frittered away down a fantasy rabbit hole. The engineers who led our successful ATE efforts had been leaving the company. No doubt, Porsche is suffering the same 'brain drain.'

The corporate manager had come down from headquarters AFTER we won the big ATE contract. A large, middle aged executive, he drove a Porsche 911 that he had to squat and squeeze into. His personal decision matched his business decision.

Bob Wilson

 

initially from chile it will be tanker ships to trucks. Very limited distribution. In Texas my guess is some will go on trucks, some may get blended and sent down the pipeline or loaded onto ships for europe.

Porsche is a small volume producer but has invested heavily in plug-in vehicles. This is partially as phevs have an inerrant advantage for high powered sports cars and sport crossovers. The taycan is there first bev, and they are developing bevs of their higher volume vehicles the macan, Cayanne, and 718 (boxster and cayman currently gasoline only).
We Check Out Porsche's New PPE Platform And Upcoming Macan BEV

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I am all for their effort ... it accelerates the ICE ban by getting them out of the car business. No need for them to waste engineering talent (if any) learning how to compete with EVs and suck the money out of their customers.

Bob Wilson

 

IMHO the total ban in 2035 will not stop ice vehicles from running in the EU-27 it will simply mean that the old ice cars will be kept longer. A percentage is a better number. The way to get those off the road are larger and larger fuel taxes which I believe EU is doing. People don't want to completely give up their engines. Those 7 countries that want a e-fuel waiver produce most of the light vehicles in Europe. If the goal is no carbon emissions on new vehicles in 2035 then e-fuels does fit that, and in many ways better than hydrogen. A requirement that twice as much e fuels must be sold as new cars use could reduce ghg from the fleet of older cars. I don't see why a sports car can't have a 100 mile battery and a 3L engine and be sold in europe, which older higher consumption non plhevs are still running on the roads.

VW group has said that they will no longer produce ice cars in europe in 2033. They likely want to produce them in another country and import them back into europe.