Adrian Hallmark and Bentley’s experts view the recent progress on e-fuels (which use airborne CO2 as a constituent and add none to the atmosphere after burning) as “really exciting” but don’t see them as a reason to change their wholesale move into EVs.
“There’s no roadmap for industrialisation at the scale that would be needed for e-fuels to replace fossil fuels,” says Hallmark. “The tech is there, and you can mix regular fuels easily with e-fuels to reduce CO2, but our view is there would be no chance in the foreseeable future to reach net zero within an acceptable timescale.”
Bentley believes it’s possible that we might see mixed fuels – R30 or R40, perhaps by the end of the 2030s – and that this would bring a rapid drop-off in CO2 emissions from engines.
