The opening ceremony of the Haru Oni eFuels plant in Punta Arenas, Chile culminated in the filling of a Porsche 911 with the nearly carbon-neutral fuel. Barbara Frenkel, a member of the Executive Board for Procurement at Porsche AG, was the one to perform this task, while Michael Steiner, a member of Porsche’s executive board responsible for research and development, drove the car. The moment was captured by news crews and photographers, and Steiner even executed a neat drift, making history by performing the first drift using Haru Oni’s new eFuel.
The new eFuel produced by the Haru Oni eFuels plant is the result of Porsche’s investment in Highly Innovative Fuels (HIF). Porsche has always been committed to making cars of the highest quality and desirability, and it has invested more than 100 million US dollars to bring eFuels to bear. The aim is to produce gasoline from scratch that will allow combustion engines to operate almost CO₂-neutrally. Porsche’s pioneering spirit has led it to search for a synthetic fuel that can meet its high standards. Its project management skills and huge knowledge of high-performance engines were brought to bear in order to back HIF in its efforts to develop eFuels.
The eFuel plant is located outside Punta Arenas, in windy Patagonia, where wind turbines run at peak efficiency up to four times more frequently than in the windiest spots in Germany. The plant produces eFuel by splitting water into its constituent components of hydrogen and oxygen. The latter is released into the atmosphere like a synthetic tree, while the hydrogen is combined with CO₂ that would otherwise be in the atmosphere to produce methanol. A final process then turns the methanol into gasoline.
The new eFuel is expected to enable engines to run without the need to burn fossil fuels. According to Steiner, there are currently around 1.3 billion vehicles with combustion engines on the road worldwide, and this number is not expected to fall significantly in the next 15 years, despite the ramp-up of electromobility. Therefore, this regenerative fuel is essential not just for Porsche, but also for the aviation and shipping industries.
While Porsche is still very much committed to electromobility and plans to sell more than 80 per cent of its cars with an all-electric drivetrain in 2030, it recognizes the need for the new eFuel. The plant is one of the first in the world to produce eFuel, which will enable engines to run long into the future, making it a sustainable option.
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