Major car maker says it sees petrol vehicles on roads until 2050
Car making giant Stellantis believes petrol vehicles will still be on the road until 2050.
However, it says industry needs to take the necessary steps to contain their carbon emissions until they’re finally replaced by fully electric models, ultimately meaning they will need to run on synthetic ‘e-fuels’.
The world’s third-largest car maker by sales and parent group to brands including Fiat, Peugeot and Vauxhall has this week ran tests of e-fuels with Saudi oil giant, Aramco.
It found that 24 types of internal combustion engines (ICE) in European vehicles it produced since 2014 can use advanced synthetic fuels without modification.
How long will petrol and diesel cars be on the road? Stellantis believes the internal combustion engine vehicle will still be in use across Europe until 2050, though says they will need to run on synthetic ‘e-fuels’
While the Government – for now – remains staunch on its commitment to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.
However, the EU has set a different deadline of 2035, though earlier this year announced a surprise stipulation that could see ICE vehicles remain on sale longer.
In March, the European Commission said it would allow sales of new cars with internal combustion engines to continue if they run exclusively on climate neutral e-fuels.
When we contacted the Department for Transport around the time of the announcement, it said: ‘We remain committed to phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030, with all new cars and vans being zero emission at the tailpipe by 2035.’
However, it went on to suggest that e-fuels are proven by industry to be ‘zero-emission at the tailpipe’ they would likely adhere to the mandate set out by ministers.
This means they would technically keep combustion engine cars in showrooms beyond the middle of the next decade.
A non-profit group of 47 businesses – including car makers Ford and Volvo – in March voiced their concern with the decision, saying that the industry had ‘already invested heavily in electric vehicles’ and any loophole on e-fuels would go against this.
Yet other car makers, including Nissan and Porsche, have been pushing on with trials of synthetic fuels in the hope they can save the internal combustion engine.
If e-fuels are proven to produce ‘zero emissions at the tailpipe’, combustion engine cars exclusively running on e-fuels – like those being developed by Porsche – would likely meet Government requirements for them to remain on sale after 2035, the Department for Transport told This is Money
Porsche is one of the car brands that has been pushing the development of e-fuels. It has invested over £61million in a production plant in Chile, which is operated by HIF (pictured)
And while Stellantis has set its own deadline for all new car sales in Europe being battery-electric by 2030, it says many of its models sold between now and 2029 will be reliant on e-fuels to remain on the roads in two decades’ time.
Christian Mueller, of Stellantis, said: ‘We have to really take care about our inventory fleet.
He went on to add that the long lifespan of cars made the development of synthetic e-fuels, which are produced with renewable energy, more important.
Christian Mueller, Head of Powertrain & Chassis Engineering at Stellantis
‘I think 25 per cent of our vehicles are still in use after 20 years. Hence, this kind of exposure time to e-fuels is considerable, very considerable,’ he told a briefing.
Stellantis estimates that its engine types identified as compatible with e-fuels represent about 28 million vehicles on the roads in Europe, with a potential CO2 emission reduction in the region of up to 400 million metric tons between 2025 and 2050.
Many sceptics, however, point out e-fuels are not a viable alternative in the short time, due to their low availability and high costs.
Dr Amer A. Amer, of Aramco, said production of e-fuels was expected to start in early 2025 from the group’s two demonstration plants in Saudi Arabia and Spain.
Stellantis and Aramco executives said e-fuel availability was expected to increase and their prices to go down, also thanks to favourable taxation in the European Union, ‘in the future’, but without providing more specific predictions.
The news comes the same day the company announced the start of production at the UK’s first electric vehicle-only manufacturing plant[1] at Ellesmere Port.
The North West factory, which had previously been the production home of the Vauxhall Astra for 40 years, has received a £100million investment to convert it to a manufacturing site for electric commercial vehicles and MPVs from Stellantis brands.
Stellantis today also confirmed the reopening of the Ellesmere Port manufacturing plant near Liverpool. It is the UK’s first electric vehicle-exclusive production site and will make battery-powered vans and MPVs
The arguments for and against e-fuels
E-fuels are made by synthesizing captured CO2 emissions and hydrogen produced using CO2-free electricity.
A selection of car brands – including Porsche and Mazda – have been looking into their development in recent years, however, they are not yet produced on a mass scale.
But there is plenty of opposition to synthetic fuel.
A study published this year by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research found that all planned e-fuel projects worldwide would only produce enough fuel to cover 10 per cent of Germany’s demand for e-fuel use in aviation, shipping and chemicals in the next few years.
Other critics say battery-electric technology is a better fit for passenger cars and precious synthetic fuels should be used only where no other option is feasible, such as in aviation.
The HIF Haru Oni eFuels plant in Punta Arenas, Chile, officially opened earlier this year following a huge investment from Porsche to produce synthetic fuels for one of its single-make racing championships
In 2021, Mazda announced it had joined the e-Fuel Alliance – a group of organisations that want to establish CO2-neutral e-fuels as a credible contributor to reducing transport emissions
What is an ‘e-fuel’, is it carbon neutral and how is it made?
E-fuels – or synthetic fuels – have been touted as a potential solution for the future of shipping and aviation, but some auto makers have lobbied for them to keep internal combustion engine cars on sale for longer, claiming they can cut carbon emissions by 85 per cent.
Synthetic fuel is manufactured using captured carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide, together with hydrogen obtained from sustainable electricity sources such as wind, solar and nuclear power.
When the fuel is burned, the aim is for it to release the same amount of carbon dioxide into the air that it has taken out during the manufacturing process, creating a carbon-neutral footprint.
Critics have said this process is not only inefficient but also incredibly expensive in terms of production.
Porsche is one of the headline-grabbing car firms known to be pumping huge funding into the development of this petrol alternative.
The German manufacturer has invested around $75million (£61million) in Chilean firm Highly Innovative Fuels (HIF).
HIF began operating the Porsche-backed Haru Oni plant in Chile in December 2022 as is now producing 130,000 litres of e-methanol for the brand’s 911 Supercup race series.
Bosch is also known to be investigating the possibility of creating synthetic fuels, while Mazda became the first automotive manufacturer to join the ‘e-Fuel Alliance’ in 2021.
Green campaign group Transport & Environment says e-fuels should be banned in order to ‘break the oil industry’s hold over transport’ and said any loophole to consider synthetic fuels should be ‘shut down’.
In 2021, it conducted emissions tests on e-fuels and claimed they emit equally high levels of toxic NOx fumes as standard E10 unleaded[2] sold at filling stations today.
It claimed its results also showed that synthetic fuel produced higher levels of carbon monoxide and ammonia, despite reducing the CO2 impact.
It concluded that e-fuels ‘will do little to alleviate the air quality problems in our cities,’ though it also revealed that its assessments were based on three different synthetic mixes concocted by French research organisation IFP Energies Nouvelles, rather than genuine e-fuels being developed by brands like Porsche.
References
- ^ UK’s first electric vehicle-only manufacturing plant (www.thisismoney.co.uk)
- ^ E10 unleaded (www.thisismoney.co.uk)