 E-fuel - is that all true?
The impending ban on internal combustion engines by the EU has brought a lot of supporters of e-fuel onto the scene. They operate with facts and figures, which sometimes make you doubt whether they are really correct.
There are wonderfully tempting offers.
Someone claims the values already shown above, namely approx. 240 g/kW for the normal road car on the left and approx. 170 g/kW for the racing car on the right, on which he at least worked too. The first question that
arises is, of course, whether the values mentioned can even be correct.
We are satisfied with the control of the left value because we lack information for the right one, but we consider it plausible. So let's continue with the left value. If we assume 20 kW for the Golf, which it needs for a real speed
of 100 km/h, then that's probably too high. In fact, it's rather lower.
Simple multiplication results in 4.8 kg/100 km. This divided by the average density of 0.83 kg/litre makes 5.8 l/100km. We never needed that much with our Golf at 100 km/h, even in winter. So the first small manipulation is
already there, namely to increase the consumption of the road car a little.
After all, it is only too impressive that the consumption of a diesel engine could be reduced by around 30 percent simply through developments that already exist in racing cars. And even more improvements were promised if
the LeMans car could have been further developed.
The question remains whether the values can be compared at all. The overall winner from 2006 in Le Mans, the first with a diesel engine, has 12 cylinders with a total displacement of 5.5 liters and 475 kW. Can such an
engine be so much more effective than that of a road car? Yes it can. One condition: it has to run almost constantly under full load.
Of course, the diesel on the left doesn't do that at 100 km/h. It only needs 20 of its possible 77 kW. And it only gets that with just the unit g/kW. And the racing car can of course score in the area of its 475 kW,
where it had an average of a good 5000 km through 24 h, i.e. about 210 km/h fast, and with a consumption of more than 80 liters per hour, i.e. almost 40l/100km.
Is this the future of the combustion engine we need? Of course not, but the wrong effect comes from the unit g/kW. Of course, the Golf left cannot keep up with its operation at low partial loads. In order to be able to do that,
you would have to give it a 20kW motor and oblige the driver to always drive at full throttle.
And then the tear nozzle comes into play, because we have to do something quickly for the 1.4 billion combustion engines in the world. After all, not everyone can afford an electric car. The Porsche company is really
exemplary in this regard, and in the final stage of development in 2026 it wants to produce 550 million liters of e-fuel per year, a quantity that fits well in a very large super tanker.
And then the tear nozzle comes into play, because we have to do something quickly for the 1.4 billion combustion engines in the world. After all, not everyone can afford an electric car. The Porsche company is really
exemplary in this regard, and in the final stage of development in 2026 it wants to produce 550 million liters of e-fuel per year, a quantity that fits well in a very large super tankship.
Well-understood, a tanker only cruises from Chile to Germany once a year. Assuming 10 l/100 km and only 15,000 km/year, the amount is just enough for around 370,000 vehicles. In 2021, however, around 270,000
Porsches with combustion engines alone were produced. So it's not even enough for another year. And what about those from 1950 that are still driving?
We assume that the production and transport costs will be at least three to four times higher than for a mixed charge of an electric car at home and at charging stations. People can then obviously afford Porsche fuel even
less than an electric car. Estimated costs over 20 years of more than 10 billion euros for 1.3 times the annual production of Porsche?
Of course, we too are against an explicit ban on internal combustion engines. Why shouldn't twice as many trees be planted for their use? And Porsche just thinks about the many expensive vintage cars. And of course their
owners can pay as much as they want. But you shouldn't put on the cloak of wanting to save the world.
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