Fittipaldi surprised by strength of ‘dirty air’ effect in F1

5 comments on “Fittipaldi surprised by strength of ‘dirty air’ effect in F1”

1. 

   Trayambak Chakravarty (@major-dev)
   10th December 2020, 4:49

   I bought the F1 2020 game simply to play as Jehan Daruvala and win the championships, but one of the unexpected benefits has been the ability to drive as Callum Illot and punt the new Russian driver multiple times out of sheer spite. It has been hours of joy and fun.
   Williams should start making road cars.
   1. 

      BasCB (@bascb)
      10th December 2020, 9:22

      :-)
2. 

   BasCB (@bascb)
   10th December 2020, 9:27

   Interesting article about efuels – I happen to agree that these more sustainably produced liquid fuels that can be burnt in more or less the ICE’s we have already will have to make a sizeable contribution to how we achieve a sustainable world economy.
   1. 

      Martin
      10th December 2020, 14:47

      The world economy will do just fine whether we burn fossil fuels or vodka, that isn’t the problem.
   2. 

      anon
      10th December 2020, 22:42

      @bascb the article is a bit of a weird read though, and you do see that when you look at some of the more informed commentators who were responding to the author of that piece.

      The article claims that there was a “recent leak in the German newspaper Handelsblatt”, seemingly trying to imply that the two were trying to hide this deal. However, it wasn’t a “recent leaked report” – both Geely and Mercedes have been pretty open about the fact they are developing a new four-cylinder engine for use with plug-in hybrid cars, and they publicly announced that nearly a month ago.

      It is also part of the publicly published strategy that Mercedes announced back in 2019 for the next 20 years so, again, it isn’t exactly a shocking revelation – and that article did also cut out the rather significant chunk of that same announcement that also talked about Mercedes’s electrification plans, suggesting there was some rather selective cherry picking by that author on what he wanted to quote.

      It also has to be said that the quoted figures for the ramping up of production at that proposed facility in Chile by the Porsche/Siemens conglomerate sounds optimistic – to go from producing 130,000 litres in 2022 to 560 million litres in 2025 (although Porsche themselves quote 2026 for the latter figure) would require them to increase their production capacity by a factor of 4,300 times in just three years.

      Scaling production up by that scale seems extremely optimistic when nobody produces e-fuels on an industrial scale right now. The biggest active facility is a single demonstrator facility in Iceland that produces 4,000 tonnes of methanol per year, which would be roughly 5 million litres – i.e. 0.9% of what that facility in Chile is meant to be producing by 2025.

      Sunfire is meant to be opening a facility in Norway in 2022 that would be capable of using direct air capture to produce about 8,000 tonnes of fuel that can be converted into e-diesel, or about 10 million litres (still only 1.8% of what Porsche/Siemens are claiming). The scale that Porsche and Siemens are talking about would be off the scale compared to current production capabilities, which makes me wonder if it can be achieved within such a short period of time when nobody has yet proven that it is possible to scale current prototype techniques up to that scale.

      It is also worth noting that, whilst a figure of 560 million litres might sound impressive – if it can be achieved – on paper, it is tiny compared to the scale of actual demand. The transport sector across just the European Union uses approximately 366 million tonnes of fuel a year, or about 460 billion litres of fuel – so, that Chilean facility would produce just 0.12% of the road vehicle demand for just the EU.

      At a more granular scale, if you look at the UK, the Department for Transport’s most recent estimate put just petrol road car demand at 12.2 million tonnes a year in 2019, which is roughly in the order of 15 billion litres of petrol – so, that plant would produce a little over 3.7% of the UK’s demand for petrol for 2019.

      In the current context of where current demands are right now, the speculation in that article that e-fuels could make up 45% of global car sales by 2030 seems rather optimistic to say the least – more realistic estimates suggest that you more likely to be a couple of decades off from achieving anything at that sort of scale.

      Additionally, the Royal Society has estimated that, if you were able to scale current production techniques up to an industrial scale by 2030, you’re looking at best at a price point of about €1 per litre for favourable conditions, and more likely a range from €1.20-2.30 per litre in 2030 (for context, that Sunfire plant opening in 2022 is hoping to produce e-fuels at €2 per litre). For a company like Porsche, which sells a premium product, selling select batches of fuel to wealthy customers for a bespoke experience right now is something they can do – but that isn’t likely to be viable at a mass market scale when the alternatives are currently significantly cheaper.

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