The exhaust gas and consumption values of e-fuels are on a comparable level to those of conventional fuels and far below the emission limits in the EU. There are also no noticeable differences in the technical properties, performance and handling. This is the result of a practical test carried out by the Central Association of the German Motor Trade (ZDK), the ADAC and the Federal Association of Medium-sized Oil Companies (Uniti) with a VW Golf.
A used and technically unchanged Golf VII was driven, which was operated over several thousand kilometers with e-fuels. Prominent companions of the “e-Fuels for Future” campaign were the TV “car doctors” Holger Parsch and Hans Jürgen Faul.
“The evaluation of the measurement results by ADAC has shown that the use of synthetic fuels in production vehicles is possible without any problems and that there are no negative effects on driving or engine performance,” says Werner Steber, Managing Director of the ZDK workshop and technology department. The “car doctors” accompanied the test for several months, drove the test vehicle many hundreds of kilometers themselves and published three videos regarding it on their YouTube channel.
After a long period of hesitation, the European Parliament has now decided on minimum quotas for climate-neutral synthetic fuels in the transport sector. The proportion of renewable fuels of non-biological origin should be at least 5.7 percent by 2030. “Even the use of a five percent admixture of e-fuels in conventional fuel would correspond to the approximately 46 million combustion engine cars in the German fleet in terms of the CO2 emission savings that an entire year of new car registrations, which consists exclusively of e-cars, that are operated with pure green electricity,” calculates Alexander Vorbau from Uniti. “According to Dr. Tobias Block from the e-Fuel Alliance around 25 billion liters of fuel. This admixture alone might save around 60 million tons of CO2.
At the same time, the workshop business with the combustion vehicles in stock might be secured through the developments at e-fuels, ZDK Vice President and Federal Guild Master Detlef Peter Grün also draws attention to an economic aspect. For the ADAC, e-fuels also mean securing affordable mobility, since not everyone can afford an electric car or have a charging facility. (awm)