Porsche to begin producing synthetic fuels in 2022 | Hacker News Reader

Porsche to begin producing synthetic fuels in 2022

autocar.co.uk

31 pointsclouddrover73 comments

It could make sense when energy density and weight is critical, such as long range planes or some racing cars series.

However I would be curious to read about the efficiency of the whole system. From the energy input at the factory to the energy output of the ICE engine, without forgetting transport and storage which fuel people love to forget about.

I really doubt they are any close to a modern EV.

"At full scale, we expect a reduction in the CO2 impact of around 85%. If you consider well-to-wheel, where we have to transport fuel, we have a global supply chain, everything around that - you have efficiency across the whole process. In a well-to-wheel consideration, it is on the same level as an electric car."

Yes I read that sentence and I would love to see the actual numbers. They may talk about the CO2 only too.

Wait so they're claiming that, today (or roughly today), we could basically do everything through synthetic fuel (Not requiring much, if any, retooling of existing infrastructure) and basically have major CO2 reductions?

This seems like a major no brainer? Especially if you start getting into "places with a bunch of sunlight but no natural petroleum can now turn into energy magnates"?

This seems like an extremely powerful idea

It is, but it's not cost-competitive right now. "E-fuel" is still much more expensive to produce than fossil fuel.

........oh, duh. Right. Yes.

Does anyone know the current relative prices here (or any research on theoretical price limits given enough scale?) Is it possible that in our lifetimes we could see something similar to the major drops in other renewables?

EDIT:

From an EU report: "E-fuel costs are currently relatively high (up to 7 euros/litre) but are expected to decrease over time due to economies of scale, learning effects and an anticipated reduction in the renewable electricity price;this is expected to lead to a cost of 1–3 euros/litre (without taxes) in 2050.3The cost of e-fuels could therefore be 1–3 times higher than the cost of fossil fuels by 2050."

7 euros/litre is _very costly_, and the reduction of price is predicated on some massive drops in solar pricing which seam unreasonable. OTOH fuel is important and if there's less of it it'll be more costly!

(https://www.concawe.eu/wp-content/uploads/E-fuels-article.pd...)

Reduction of price isn't predicated only on massive drops in renewable energy prices - a lot of the projected drops also come from drops in the non-electricity cost. (That EU paper gives an energy efficiency of 40% for the electricity -> gasoline conversion, which my gut feeling says is pretty close to the theoretical maximum.)

By my rough current calculations (average EU non-household electricity costs at 8 eurocents per kWh pre-tax, 0.12 after-tax; times 9.1kWh/L energy density of gasoline; divided by 0.4 conversion efficiency) electricity costs are only about 2.5 euros/L out of that 7 euros/L total. Could probably be brought down to 2 euros/L by concentrating production in places with plentiful renewables, like how aluminum production is currently concentrated in Iceland. That leaves 4-5 euros/L coming from non-electricity costs, where cost reductions will be easier but need to be more drastic.

Even 3 euros/L is still really expensive, but only about 100-150% above the pre-pandemic peak. Anyone who doesn't really need that specific energy or energy density would still have a very strong incentive to go electric, but there would still be some viable (though more expensive) business model for mass/volume-constrained applications like air travel.

to be honest it feels like a huge boost would be for there to be a mandate for airliners and the like to start buying e-fuels (since fuel is like 10% of the current costs, if that triples we would be looking at maybe 20-30% increase in prices? Which is obviously a lot but to be honest feels pretty manageable). Like on some sliding scale over time.

So long as standard fossil fuels are on the market and cheap nobody has much incentive to go the other way.

This is CO2 only and only if you count electricity as fully CO2-free, like from renewable sources. However, the total amount of electricity is way higher than an electric car would use (up to 10x). So at a time, where coal and oil are still used to generate electricity or heat houses, these synthetic fuels would even increase the CO2 impact. Only when renewables are powering mostly everything else, this becomes interesting for uses where batteries won't do (like planes, but not for cars).

If you look at the electric energy used for driving the same range, the "e-fuel" powered combustion engine is like a factor of 10 off. The combustion engine alone is at least 4 times less efficient than the electric powertrain and that does not account for any inefficiencies in generating the e-fuels nor their processing and transportation. It would be a disaster to produce them while there is any coal or oil burned for electricity production. Only when they are used to replace the last usages of fossil fuels, they make sense. As you write, for planes for example.

Efficiency doesn't matter, cost does.

Of course power costs are part of costs, but if you're able to shift your load to times of peak energy production, it's going to be very cheap.

Efficiency matters if we want to reduce the CO2 output. As long as the grid isn't CO2-neutral, using a lot more electricity for synthetic fuels compared to electric cars means, that the electricity could have been used to replace more CO2 production elsewhere, like heating homes.

I think this answers your question: https://twitter.com/transenv/status/899976235794788352

And that doesn't even include transport, storage and distribution losses for power to liquid.

That's talking about hydrogen, not synthetic gasoline.

Synthetic gasoline is much worse than hydrogen from an electricity efficiency perspective, but it has a huge advantage in volumetric efficiency and in existing infrastructure.

The third column shows synthetic gasoline.

> such as long range planes

or rockets

Synthetic fuels will likely always be more expensive than traditional fuel has been. It’s also not going to be “greener” than other ways to power a car. However, there will also likely always be a market for it from car collectors and enthusiasts. It makes sense the Porsche would be producing this even if it isn’t a cheap, green energy source. It wouldn’t surprise me if this sort of fuel is sold at the Nürburgring in 5-10 years.

I think the more important market will be aviation and military applications, where mass and volume are more constrained. e.g. the US military has been plowing money into synthetic fuel for decades, and EU countries are targeting 30% of aircraft fuel being synthetic or biomass by 2030.

I was kind of guessing that that might be the future actually, not battery-powered EVs. Simply because of the large installed base (and affordability especially considering the secondary market). And then of course hydrogen for more hight tech vehicles.

As for batteries. Who wants to haul hundreds of kilos of hard-to-mine-and-recycle materials with some of the lowest energy densities per mass currently in use?

> As for batteries. Who wants to haul hundreds of kilos of hard-to-mine-and-recycle materials with some of the lowest energy densities per mass currently in use?

Right now the investors vote for that future, though they may be wrong.

Would the perfect car have an electric engine for everyday driving and a hydrogen tank/generator for backup/range driving?

You already have that kind of hybrids with ICE engines and they are bad. A lot heavier because of two systems, with a system that is rarely used (unless it's a gaz car with a tiny battery only for the taxes benefits) so it's not very reliable, and more expensive.

I will cite Carlos Tavares (CEO of Stellantis, Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, DS Automobiles, Fiat, Fiat Professional, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram Trucks and Vauxhall Motors.) when he was still working for Renault and talking about hybrids to the government. The guy is not a EV fan, far from it.

"Why not opt for the hybrid engine? We think that it can only be a temporary solution because it requires two types of motorisation, thermal and electric, which has an impact on the total cost of the vehicle and ultimately on prices. Two motorisations is one too many."

The same argument works for hydrogen.

Isn't it strictly better on a non cost basis for now though if you need range and want efficiency?

Not really, efficiency of ICE engine or hydrogen are pretty poor. And on long trips you need to take breaks anyway.

Today we already have production electric cars that charge at more than 1000km/h for a while. If this number is increased even a bit more and the charging network continue to be developed there is no good reason to put something else in the car. Not to mention it's difficult to find hydrogen everywhere, while electricity is very well developed.

I wouldn't put much weight on Stellantis' opinion for car tech. They're the furthest behind in both ICE and EV technology and innovations. So of course they're going to resist regulations for better anything.

A lot of people are down on hybrids but they look like a good interim solution to me. We can't make enough batteries to electrify everything right now but we can eliminate a ton of emissions with plugins.

If I look at our usage patterns most of the year we are making short journeys, 20 miles or less. Then occasionally we will take the car on holiday. We could easily eliminate the majority of our car's emissions with a plugin hybrid.

With the price difference between a PHEV and an EV, you could get a nicer short-range EV for everyday and rent a nicer car for holidays.

Not true, due to tax incentives. I just looked up the difference between my PHEV and the equivalent gas-only version [1]. The PHEV starts at 43k€, the gas one (Cooper S) starts at 40k€.

[1] https://www.mini.pt/pt_PT/home/standard-selector/configurado...

Due to tax incentives, the EV Mini is 29k€ where I live, 31k€ in France. Even though it's outdated tech, it's still a nice short-range EV and you save money by not having to buy, maintain, and transport around an ICE.

My brother in law has one, it doesn't have the range to drive to his mum's house and back (58 miles each way).

Not at highway speeds indeed. He should have got another car without outdated technology and a small battery, or he should stop charging for a few minutes. Difficult life.

The PHEV was a better solution for me. The electric range is enough for the daily commute, I can charge at the office. Anything longer, and it is a gasoline car. I have 40 thousand km on it, two thirds of them electric.

How about an ordinary electric car with a small trailer carrying a fuel generator?

That would be a surprisingly reasonable solution for scenarios where you couldn't recharge at your destination. A generator always runs at peak efficiency, which is easily twice of the average efficiency of a plain ICE car, so even after the losses at charging the electric car wouldn't be much worse than the ICE car. And you would use it when there are no alternatives.

If you go on a longer camping trip, you should just pack a bunch of solar cells :)

We are at a point where it becomes less and less relevant. There are electric cars with 600 to 800 km range already which recharge very quickly. And the development isn't going to stop any time soon. Why even consider a complex hybrid solution, when you can just get a bigger and faster charging battery?

We are already at a point where you can recharge an electric car faster than the driver needs for finishing food and coffee :)

>There are electric cars with 600 to 800 km range

In the very high price ranges.

A Model 3 can reach the 600km range, and that is certainly cheaper than hydrogen cars. And the price is constantly going down.

Model 3 that can reach 580 km costs about 2.5 Volkswagen Golfs.

Yes, if you look at the very basic Golf. Which is a different car. There is also the ID.3 as an electric counterpart, but that might not get quite 600km of range. But prices are coming down.

So yes, if you really need 600km range and beyond right now and a Model 3 is too expensive for you, electric isn't a solution, get an ICE car. Though you have to watch the running costs so the TCO doesn't exceed the one of an electric car. Certainly they will, if you buy synthetic fuels.

The cheapest ID.3 is about 1.4 Volkswagen Golfs and gets 350 km of range. For 540 km, you need to pay 2.0 Volkswagen Golfs.

Yes, what is your point? There are cheaper ICE cars than electric cars, especially if you get the longer ranges. You still need to watch the TCO and this thread is about expensive synthetic fuels for Porsche cars, which are at the other end of the price range.

That while you can get an EV with a 600-800 km, it's definitely not something that is attainable by the common man. So it's really only "less and less relevant" for the elite few.

I personally wouldn't be able to afford a Tesla with my meager engineering salary, especially one that is actually in that 600-800 km range. The TCO on one of those cars is also most likely higher than what it is on an ICE car.

We already have those (with a gasoline back-up) - they're called plug-in hybrids.

People who want to go 0-60mph in 2 seconds, apparently.

Batteries doen't have hundreds of kilos of hard-to-mine materials. And most of them are recyclable. Lithium isn't hard to mine and there are less than 10kg of lithium in an electric car. The only somewhat rare metal is cobalt, but Tesla is about to switch to cobalt-free chemistries. The rest is just plain steel, aluminum and carbon in various forms.

And note, that hydrogen cars are not lighter than electric cars, so they don't save any resources, not counting for the additional energy required due to the lower efficiencies of the hydrogen production chain.

You still have nickel and manganese. Plus secondary metals like copper and tin for the electronics.

You should google the Riversimple Rasa. Hydrogen cars can be made far lighter than EVs.

Compare the Toyota Mirai to the Tesla Model 3. These are comparable cars. The Mirai is more expensive and heavier than the Model 3.

The Mirai is a much larger car than the Model 3.

It doesn't offer more interior space nor can it keep up with the driving performance of the Model 3. That is the problem with hydrogen: you need physically large tanks which also need to be at least cylindrical, so you cannot optimize their shape.

The tanks are physically smaller than batteries. The limitation is with packaging, not the technology itself. Future fuel cell cars with just have multiple small tanks instead of a few big ones.

There now exists hydrogen burning internal combustion engines. It raises the question of how important is the need for a liquid hydrocarbon fuel.

Important context for synfuels: https://twitter.com/transenv/status/899976235794788352

If current trends continue, by 2030 synthetic fuel generated from solar power will be cheaper than gasoline.

This also means that in 2030 charging a BEV with solar power will be 10x cheaper than filling with gasoline.

Source: Casey Handmer, IIRC.

I've never heard of "synthetic fuel" before, and I didn't see any kind of description in the article - anyone have a summary of how such fuels are made, and of what?

This is what it appears to be based on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...

So basically hydrocarbons of various molecular weights which gasoline or diesel also consist of, but one article mentioned there were only a dozen or two major components, rather than the hundreds of different hydrocarbons in each of the mainstream motoring fuels which have been refined from crude oil. This could be some pretty clean stuff.

The C10 to C20 straight chain hydrocarbons mentioned in the Wikipedia entry would be within the diesel range, and identical to the same straight-chain components found naturally within crude oil. Synthetically this process would be expected to yield much less of the branched-chain hydrocarbons found in petroleum-based diesel, and likely low to insignificant _aromatic hydrocarbons_ like the benzene, toluene, & xylene which are the major ones in the gasoline range.

I have made laboratory blends of these materials (still do) for decades as NIST-traceable reference materials for comparison to petroleum materials.

Gasoline engines need the next lighter fraction of refined crude than diesels use, plus straight chains are much lower in antiknock rating (R+M/2) so are not acceptable for gasoline engines. I imagine there has been some successful effort by Porsche/Siemens where some branched-chain hydrocarbons lighter than C10 can be preferentially yielded to substitute for petrol.

Diesel engines are supposed to _knock_ but not gasoline engines.

Remains to be seen, I'm sure to be part of the discussion on the ASTM Committee when it comes to specifications & testing before this could become mainstream.

It's an alternative fuel so I'll probably get some of the earliest samples.

It seems that Porches are going the way of mechanical watches -- i.e. complicated, anachronistic, expensive, and through that somehow prestigious, high status etc.

Porsche's electric car is the Taycan. Here are some demonstrations of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItCGU7BTBv8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m31EgQkswg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jSG_10_JRg

The next BEV from Porsche will be an electric Macan.

I know that Taycan exists. So what? If EVs become the norm, due to evolutionary or revolutionary increase in battery capacity/energy density, Porche will be one of the last to stop producing ICE vehicles. Not surprising that they are planning for the future and researching synthetic fuels. "Mechanical watchness" can be felt in their marketing narratives that influencers produce.

If they're successful with this fast, it will likely stop the advance of electric cars. If the average Joe could basically stick to their current life style but with a clean CO2 balance, I think this option has a good chance to prevail.

The problem is, that synthetic fuels used in a combustion engine mean like a factor of 10 of electricity used for the same distance driven compared to an electric car. This has a cost and an environment impact, especially if the electricity could be used somewhere else with higher efficiency, like heating homes.

It also wouldn't change a bit about the car exhaust problems. Also, we are approaching quickly the point where electric cars are cheaper to manufacture than combustion engine cars.

Well, maybe. If electric cars are just better cars, then I think they'll prevail anyways. (For now, gas cars are generally lighter and have better range, whereas electric cars are cheaper to operate and need less maintenance.)

A big open question on these synthetic fuels is whether it can be done in a way that's price competitive with fossil fuels. It makes sense for a company like Porche to explore this first, since the average Porche customer probably isn't particularly concerned about the cost of fuel.

That said, if this works out and if Liquid piston's inside-out rotary engine[1] works out, it could make the decade or so interesting times for combustion-engine cars.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25450477

Remember when debating about walled gardens, especially iOS, we were writing something along the lines of "imagine if a car manufacturer would sell a car working only with its own gasoline. Impossible!"

And yet

> Dedicated plant will produce sustainable fuel for existing combustion-engined Porsche models

However I guess that those cars should work with any synthetic fuel or Porsche has to build its own distribution network. They don't sell millions of cars.

We know what "existing combustion-engined Porsche models" look like: they run off of standardized gasoline. If their synthetic substitutes will power a Porsche car, they will also power similar engines from other makers.

Isn't it already the case with electric car manufacturers, with plug designs and specifications that are not guaranteed to be compatible with other chargers, nor third party plug makers if they ever come to the marker?

That's not really a problem with electric car manufacturers going forward. There's only going to be two standards: Tesla's proprietary one, and, CCS that everyone else agreed to standardize on.

Not sure what Tesla is using in the US, but in Europe, they are using Type 2/CCS. Most Superchargers are CCS now (they used DC on Type 2 before and Tesla submitted that as a standard proposal, but the industry went for CCS for DC charging)

In the US, they use a proprietary mechanical connector - but the electrical interface is the same. So with a mechanical adapter you get graceful degradation to the CCS standard, just without fancy Tesla charger/vehicle communication.

Where would that be? In Europe electric charging has been standardized to Type2/CCS. So any electric car can charge at any charging spot.

Not just in Europe - even in the US, Tesla is the only company that doesn't use a standardized charger.

Even the Tesla charger is electrically compatible with the standard one; you just need a mechanical adapter to plug in, and won't have any of the extra Tesla-only features that require complicated communication between vehicle and charger. In the EU, they're forced to use the standard connector, and they're doing perfectly fine with it.

There's an EU mandatory standard (which Tesla follows), and in the US an optional one that everyone but Tesla follows (that is, everyone but the gorilla with 80% market share :-P).

Note that there are other standards in the rest of the world, e.g. China has a mechanically-incompatible connector (same as the EU standard, but with the male end on the cable and female end on the car and charger).

Europe has standardized on CCS type 2 Combo. Having a common standard encourages investment into charging networks from more companies. Here's a recent example:

https://www.electrive.com/2021/02/17/aral-expands-hpc-networ...

Porsche's parent company is Volkswagen Group and they do sell millions of cars.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com