Ulm (dpa / lsw) – According to the economist Franz Josef Radermacher, synthetic fuels for cars should play a greater role on the way to climate neutrality. “I personally assume that combustion engines will still be more important than battery electrics in 100 years,” said the head of the Ulm research institute for application-oriented knowledge processing in the “Reutlinger General-anzeiger” (Wednesday). “Green methanol, green gasoline and green diesel – that makes a lot of sense.”
Battery electric drives are interesting for certain applications, but not for long distances and not for trucks. In Germany, some overhead lines would be laid on roads. “But you can’t make a tram out of a truck,” said Radermacher. “Quite apart from that, we don’t have the green electricity for it either. Therefore: e-fuels must be pursued further.”
E-fuels are fuels for petrol or diesel engines that are produced using a chemical process. Critics argue that the production requires a lot of energy and is therefore expensive and inefficient. Environmentalists therefore do not see e-fuels as a sensible alternative to electromobility.
The SPD, Greens and FDP have stated in their coalition agreement that the government wants to continue to support e-fuels despite a planned ban on new registrations for combustion engines from 2035. Porsche has been involved in the development of e-fuels for a long time. In September 2021, for example, the go-ahead was given for a pilot plant to produce the fuels in Chile.