VW brand chief not concerned with e-fuels: ‘by 2035, combustion is over’
VW brand chief Thomas Schäfer said that recent discussion over an e-fuel exception to EU’s 2035 gas car ban is “unnecessary noise” and that “by 2035 [combustion engines] are over anyway,” in a recent interview with Automotive News Europe.
The interview mostly covered European topics, such as the availability of Volkswagen’s upcoming EVs in Europe. But the VW executive also spoke forcefully about electrification being a no-brainer.
The EU was recently about to finalize a plan to ban new internal combustion engine cars in 2035 across the bloc, but at the final hour, auto-producing countries, including Germany and Italy, objected. The proposal was slated not to get final approval until Germany made a compromise with the EU Commission, allowing e-fuels as a “climate-neutral” fuel for combustion vehicles.
E-fuels are synthetic fuels that can be produced from captured carbon emissions. They can be considered carbon neutral because those carbon emissions would have been released into the atmosphere, but are captured, turned into fuels, and then burned and… released back into the atmosphere. However, since their use as a fuel did not contribute to increased emissions over what the baseline would have been before their capture, this is why they are considered carbon neutral.
But e-fuels also need a source of carbon to be fueled with, to begin with, and most carbon capture currently happens in oil & gas fields. This carbon is often used to help drill more oil or used in tricky accounting to make firms look carbon-neutral when they aren’t. If carbon reductions from capture get double counted – for example, by the oil company doing the capturing and by the cars that are burning it – then we end up pretending that we’re making more carbon reductions than we actually are.
And they still emit as many harmful air pollutants as fossil fuels, and are therefore still harmful to human health.
It takes energy to make e-fuels as well, and that energy could just be used to fuel an electric car in the first place. Why waste solar and wind resources on converting carbon into fuel, only to burn it and release that carbon into the atmosphere, when you could just charge a car with the electricity from solar and wind in the first place?
And they also perpetuate the combustion engine. An e-fuels exception means that companies can continue making combustion engine cars, convince themselves that they’re carbon neutral, but also sell them in locales without an e-fuel requirement, which still causes just as much global warming. And those global warming emissions affect everyone, whether they happen in Europe or Saudi Arabia.
VW brand chief sees e-fuels as a distraction
So the e-fuel exemption is somewhat of a maintenance of the status quo or “unnecessary noise,” as Schäfer rightly called it:
What you do you think about Germany’s [subsequently successful] bid to modify the 2035 EU combustion engine ban to include cars powered by e-fuels?
Schäfer: That’s unnecessary noise from my point of view. By 2035 [combustion engines] are over anyway. We said by 2033 we’re done. By 2030 we plan that 80 percent of our vehicles sold in Europe are battery electric, so why spend a fortune on old technology that doesn’t really give you any benefit?
Who’s behind the German position? Party politics? VW Group CEO Oliver Blume?
Schäfer: It’s not Mr. Blume behind it. I guarantee that. This discussion around e-fuels is widely misunderstood. They have a role to play in existing fleets, but won’t replace EVs. That’s complete nonsense. Look at the physics of making e-fuels. We don’t have enough energy as it is, so why waste it on e-fuels?
VW has been among those at the forefront of the industry in terms of electrification. Much of its progress happened under former CEO Herbert Diess, who stepped down last year and was replaced by former Porsche CEO Oliver Blume.
There was some question over whether Blume would be as positive about electrification as Diess, who said consumers would be “dumb” to buy one of VW’s gas cars in 2021. But it looks like VW as a brand is at least charging forward with its EV plans, per Schäfer’s comments in this interview. And according to Schäfer, Blume, CEO of Germany’s largest company, apparently was not behind Germany’s push to get the e-fuel exemption into the EU regulations.
Schäfer points out that the e-fuel question is largely irrelevant to VW and should be irrelevant to the industry as a whole. VW is done with combustion engines, EV demand will be high by 2035, and there’s no sense in investing money to improve an inferior, older technology like combustion engines.
He also stated, in an answer about upcoming Euro 7 emissions regulations, that VW “would rather put [its] money into electrification during the final years of the combustion engine than make a final version of it that is prohibitively expensive.” If Euro 7 requires hefty R&D to make gas engines cleaner, why bother spending that money when EVs are already clean?
Electrek’s Take
Clearly, we agree with Schäfer here. Making exemptions to regulations purely to perpetuate combustion engines is folly.
Not only will companies be wasting money developing a dead-end technology (which Daimler, inventor of the combustion engine, stopped doing in 2019), but they’ll be giving up a perfectly good opportunity to electrify now. By wasting focus on dead technology, they only put themselves into a worse long-term position because the future is coming no matter what.
We see this happening in the US as well, as automakers’ current EV commitments aren’t enough in light of new EPA rules. Automakers could respond to these rules by begging for exceptions so they don’t have to follow the rules, or they could increase their commitments in recognition that technology, consumer desires, and the threat of climate change are all advancing quickly.
In the EU, some governments chose the former path, asking for exemptions. But more intelligent brands, like Voltswagen, seem to see the way the tide is changing.
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A new whitepaper by heavy truck makers PACCAR and Dragonfly Energy that incorporates real-world fleet trial data and Environmental Chamber Testing conducted at the PACCAR Technical Center seems to indicate that over-the-road truck drivers are ready to embrace battery power and reduce emissions – just not while they’re driving.
The whitepaper, titled Reducing Idle Time & Fuel Costs: Lithium Powered Solutions for Commercial Fleets, looked at different ways to reduce harmful diesel emissions across the duty cycles of a number of different fleet operations, and what they found was that powering a truck’s auxiliary and cabin systems with a high-voltage lithium-ion battery dramatically reduced engine idle time even under worst-case operating scenarios.
Another report by a group called the Clean Air Task Force showed that idling heavy-duty diesel engines while drivers are “hoteling” in their trucks (they’re parked, but running the engine to power the sleeper cab’s climate controls, kitchens, or electronics) exacts a heavy toll on both drivers and shipping fleets.
Idling not only burns fuel and increases operating costs at 0 MPG, it also emits a dangerous cocktail of harmul pollutants that pose direct health risks to drivers, rest stop employees, and nearby communities. Diesel exhaust contains fine particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NOₓ), and numerous airborne toxins that are known carcinogens, making them a serious problem even to those who think climate change is a global conspiracy from “Big Science” to keep those plucky young oil billionaires in the place.
From a mechanical standpoint, extended idling also accelerates engine wear, degrades emission-control systems, increases maintenance, and shortens engine life.
Battle Born semi batteries
By adding a relatively high capacity hybrid battery (like Dragonfly Energy’s Battle Born brand batteries) to the something like a PACCAR Kenworth T680 (at top), drivers can stay parked for several hours, operating their sleepers’ refrigerators, ACs, or heaters without the noise and emissions and costs of diesel – and they probably sleep better too, without the drone of neighboring diesels cranking on around them all night.
“We believe idle reduction remains one of the most immediate and cost-effective ways fleets can reduce fuel consumption and emissions while improving driver comfort. But just as important, the industry is increasingly focused on operational efficiency and maximizing asset utilization,” explains Wade Seaburg, chief commercial officer at Dragonfly Energy. “We believe our collaboration with PACCAR not only validates the performance of our LiFePO₄-powered solutions, but also highlights how they help fleets maximize uptime, extend equipment life and get more out of their assets.”
The electrification of the auxiliary systems also reduces engine hours, stretching out the time between scheduled maintenance and reducing operational downtime.
In other words, the hybridization of OTR trucks is a win-win-win. The full whitepaper is available for download at BattleBornBatteries.com/Lithium-Powered-Idle-Reduction. Take a look at it yourself, then let us know what you think of the idea in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: PACCAR, Dragonfly Energy; via AP Newswire.
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French car brand Renault believes they’ve got the key to more affordable EV batteries, and their new LFP tech promises to slash the costs of production by 40%. The result? New, desirable EVs with a sub-20K price tag that aren’t made in China.
Spanish news site Motorpasión is reporting that Renault, like Ford, is embracing a more affordable lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery chemistries that are safer, cheaper, and less dependent on rare mineral mining than conventional li-ion batteries.
That’s a big change from the recent past. Because they’re less energy dense and weigh a bit more than comparably-sized lithium-ion NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) batteries, European automakers looked down on LFPs. But with Chinese automakers like BYD, MG, and Leapmotor flooding Europe with affordable LFP-powered EVs, that stigma is fading fast.
Fun, affordable LFP vehicles
The stability, battery life, and cost advantages of LFP have become too compelling to ignore — especially as global lithium and nickel prices continue to fluctuate, making long-term business projections difficult. Renault’s decision to embrace LFPs then, is less about catching up on the Chinese’ technology than it is about catching up catching up on the Chinese’ economics, and acknowledging that affordability is the real barrier to mass adoption.
That was the thinking behind Renault’s relaunch of the R5 E-TECH (sold as the Le Car in the US) and the announcement that a new Twingo would be coming soon.
It was also the thinking behind the French carmaker’s decision to launch the new Ampere vehicle software development sub-brand back in 2023. At the time, the stated goals were to improve (what are now called) Renault’s software-defined vehicles and, separately, to reduce manufacturing costs of new EVs by 40% – which, if you’ll notice, is just about what the switch to LFP chemistries will enable them to do.
“Creating a new model of company specializing in electric vehicles and software running as of today: How better to illustrate our revolution and the boldness of our teams?” asked Luca de Meo, Renault Group CEO, at Ampere’s launch. He answered his own question, saying, “Instill a sustainable corporate vision and ensure it is reflected in each and every process and product. Build on the Group’s strengths and review the way we do everything. Form a tight-knit team and work for the collective. Harness our French roots and become the leader in Europe. Assert our commitment to our customers, our planet and those living on it.”
Renault is set to launch an all-new, all-electric version of its iconic Twingo minicar from the 1990s in the next few months (at top). The car is targeted straight at the BYD Dolphin and is expected to have a starting price of about €17,000 (just under $20,000 US).
SOURCE: Motorpasión; images via Renault.
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