VW model chief Thomas Schäfer stated that current dialogue over an e-fuel exception to EU’s 2035 gasoline automobile ban is “pointless noise” and that “by 2035 [combustion engines] are over anyway,” in a current interview with Automotive Information Europe.
The interview principally lined European matters, akin to the provision of Volkswagen’s upcoming EVs in Europe. However the VW government additionally spoke forcefully about electrification being a no brainer.
The EU was just lately about to finalize a plan to ban new inside combustion engine vehicles in 2035 throughout the bloc, however on the remaining hour, auto-producing nations, together with Germany and Italy, objected. The proposal was slated to not get remaining approval till Germany made a compromise with the EU Fee, permitting e-fuels as a “climate-neutral” gasoline for combustion automobiles.
E-fuels are artificial fuels that may be produced from captured carbon emissions. They are often thought-about carbon impartial as a result of these carbon emissions would have been launched into the ambiance, however are captured, became fuels, after which burned and… launched again into the ambiance. Nonetheless, since their use as a gasoline didn’t contribute to elevated emissions over what the baseline would have been earlier than their seize, that is why they’re thought-about carbon impartial.
However e-fuels additionally want a supply of carbon to be fueled with, to start with, and most carbon seize presently occurs in oil & gasoline fields. This carbon is usually used to assist drill extra oil or utilized in difficult accounting to make companies look carbon-neutral once they aren’t. If carbon reductions from seize get double counted – for instance, by the oil firm doing the capturing and by the vehicles which might be burning it – then we find yourself pretending that we’re making extra carbon reductions than we really are.
They usually nonetheless emit as many dangerous air pollution as fossil fuels, and are due to this fact nonetheless dangerous to human well being.
It takes power to make e-fuels as nicely, and that power may simply be used to gasoline an electrical automobile within the first place. Why waste photo voltaic and wind sources on changing carbon into gasoline, solely to burn it and launch that carbon into the ambiance, when you would simply cost a automobile with the electrical energy from photo voltaic and wind within the first place?
They usually additionally perpetuate the combustion engine. An e-fuels exception implies that corporations can proceed making combustion engine vehicles, persuade themselves that they’re carbon impartial, but in addition promote them in locales with out an e-fuel requirement, which nonetheless causes simply as a lot world warming. And people world warming emissions have an effect on everybody, whether or not they occur in Europe or Saudi Arabia.
VW model chief sees e-fuels as a distraction
So the e-fuel exemption is considerably of a upkeep of the established order or “pointless noise,” as Schäfer rightly known as it:
What you do you concentrate on Germany’s [subsequently successful] bid to change the 2035 EU combustion engine ban to incorporate vehicles powered by e-fuels?
Schäfer: That’s pointless noise from my perspective. By 2035 [combustion engines] are over anyway. We stated by 2033 we’re executed. By 2030 we plan that 80 % of our automobiles bought in Europe are battery electrical, so why lay our a fortune on outdated know-how that doesn’t actually offer you any profit?
Who’s behind the German place? Celebration politics? VW Group CEO Oliver Blume?
Schäfer: It’s not Mr. Blume behind it. I assure that. This dialogue round e-fuels is extensively misunderstood. They’ve a job to play in present fleets, however gained’t exchange EVs. That’s full nonsense. Have a look at the physics of constructing e-fuels. We don’t have sufficient power as it’s, so why waste it on e-fuels?
VW has been amongst these on the forefront of the trade when it comes to electrification. A lot of its progress occurred underneath former CEO Herbert Diess, who stepped down final yr and was changed by former Porsche CEO Oliver Blume.
There was some query over whether or not Blume can be as optimistic about electrification as Diess, who stated shoppers can be “dumb” to purchase one in every of VW’s gasoline vehicles in 2021. But it surely appears to be like like VW as a model is no less than charging ahead with its EV plans, per Schäfer’s feedback on this interview. And in keeping with Schäfer, Blume, CEO of Germany’s largest firm, apparently was not behind Germany’s push to get the e-fuel exemption into the EU rules.
Schäfer factors out that the e-fuel query is essentially irrelevant to VW and needs to be irrelevant to the trade as a complete. VW is completed with combustion engines, EV demand might be excessive by 2035, and there’s no sense in investing cash to enhance an inferior, older know-how like combustion engines.
He additionally said, in a solution about upcoming Euro 7 emissions rules, that VW “would reasonably put [its] cash into electrification through the remaining years of the combustion engine than make a remaining model of it that’s prohibitively costly.” If Euro 7 requires hefty R&D to make gasoline engines cleaner, why hassle spending that cash when EVs are already clear?
Electrek’s Take
Clearly, we agree with Schäfer right here. Making exemptions to rules purely to perpetuate combustion engines is folly.
Not solely will corporations be losing cash creating a dead-end know-how (which Daimler, inventor of the combustion engine, stopped doing in 2019), however they’ll be giving up a wonderfully good alternative to affect now. By losing deal with lifeless know-how, they solely put themselves right into a worse long-term place as a result of the long run is coming it doesn’t matter what.
We see this taking place within the US as nicely, as automakers’ present EV commitments aren’t sufficient in gentle of latest EPA guidelines. Automakers may reply to those guidelines by begging for exceptions so that they don’t must comply with the foundations, or they might improve their commitments in recognition that know-how, client wishes, and the specter of local weather change are all advancing shortly.
Within the EU, some governments selected the previous path, asking for exemptions. However extra clever manufacturers, like Voltswagen, appear to see the way in which the tide is altering.
