“So it doesn’t make sense to produce fuels; you should instead use it directly,” he said. “That I fully agree with. However, the point is you don’t need to produce the fuels locally.”
By instead using a solar plant in Morocco or a wind plant in Chile, Furler suggested, you could make use of electricity that would not otherwise have made it to mainland Europe to clean up transport.
Moreover, Furler claimed, such a plant could produce three times more electricity per year than its equivalent in Europe. That means you could cleanly fuel thousands of ICE cars in Europe using that electricity, rather than zero EVs – because that power cannot be transported, whereas the liquid petrol can be.
Synhelion has already partnered airline Lufthansa and Switzerland’s importer for the Volkswagen Group, AMAG, to deploy its fuels in the real world.
AMAG was the first to use the company’s fuel to power a car, demonstrating it in a short-wheelbase Audi Quattro.
But there remains a long road ahead until they are ready for the mass market, said Furler: “Around 2030 to 2035, the different pathways are likely at a competitive scale, and can then be deployed rather quickly.”
He cited scaling up as the biggest challenge, because of the cost involved, and said it could take until 2050 until it’s on a comparable scale to the fossil fuel industry.
There is also an issue with cost: Synhelion’s fuels are currently “five to 10 times more expensive” than fossil fuels and “probably we will not achieve full parity”.
The argument could become more compelling if fossil fuels are taxed on their carbon impact (bringing their costs up closer to synthetics fuels), said Furler, and a barrel price of around €1 (86p) per litre would make it “a viable solution”.