Ecology is a major subject for a manufacturer like Porsche, with a history forged around combustion engines and sports cars. So that in parallel with its expenditure in the electric car, the mark has just put the hand in the pocket to bet on the gasoline of tomorrow. A fuel that is not hydrogen, but synthetic gasoline dubbed “eFuel”.
well decided to go public as quickly as possible and thus raise enough capital to keep pace with Tesla, Porsche has just invested a big ticket. Last Wednesday, it announced a massive investment of 75 billion dollars to continue working in the research and production of its green-tinted black gold. Objective: continue to produce heat engines while becoming carbon neutral before the end of the decade.
Full pace in 2026
His teams have been talking regarding it for well over a year. But everything accelerated in May 2021 as Porsche redoubled its efforts with its partners Siemens Energy and Exxon Mobil, to increase production until it reached full speed in 2026. With them, the German brand located production in southern Chile, where it has all the equipment for making the product.
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This week’s investment brought Porsche to the capital of the HIF Global LLC holding company with 12.5% of the shares. HIF Global manages the synthetic fuel production facilities in the South American country. The process used is the “Fischer-Tropsch”, discovered in the 1920s. It consists in taking to produce hydrogen, then capturing the CO2 to create an “eMethanol” that can be transformed into gasoline by a process baptized by Porsche “methanol-to-gasoline”.
Porsche will use eFuel for the first time on the occasion of the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2023, during which the regulations do not require any condition on this point for engines. Then, the production rate will accelerate, from 130,000 liters to several million.
