All Porsche 911 GT3 Cup vehicles racing on this 12 months’s Porsche Supercup sequence will function on eFuels for the primary time.
The German producer says the gasoline is ‘probably near-carbon-neutral’ and is mixed from a feedstock that comes from Porsche’s Haru Oni pilot plant in Chile. It follows on from three years of the Porsche Supercup utilizing a second-generation, bio-based partially artificial gasoline combination developed with Esso. Switching to eFuels is designed to be the subsequent step in decreasing carbon emissions within the firm’s flagship single-make sequence. Porsche has to date invested over US$100 million in eFuel analysis and improvement for street automotive purposes and needs to showcase a few of its work by means of motorsport.
eFuels are artificial, liquid fuels produced from renewable power sources corresponding to hydrogen and carbon dioxide from the air. Porsche’s Haru Oni facility, which opened on the finish of 2022, makes use of wind energy to extract the hydrogen. The producer presently will get its CO2 from a biogenic supply however is creating a proof-of-concept direct air seize course of (DAC) system that will likely be extra environmentally pleasant. The extracted hydrogen and CO2 are first became eMethanol, which is then distilled to decrease the water content material and transformed by means of dehydration reactions into the artificial gasoline that will likely be utilized in Supercup.
The introduction of eFuels won’t require main modifications to the sector of round 30 Porsche Supercup vehicles, which use the identical four-litre, six-cylinder engine.
‘The Supercup can be a beacon for us in the case of eFuels,’ stated Michael Steiner, board member for analysis and improvement at Porsche. ‘Motorsport has all the time been a driver of innovation – now additionally when it comes to gasoline. By way of this undertaking, we’re taking additional steps in direction of reaching our decarbonisation targets.
‘In case you have a look at all the worth chain, the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup racing vehicles can race with eFuels in a probably nearly CO2-neutral manner. Right here, the brand new gasoline is used underneath the hardest situations. To sluggish world warming, it’s important to cut back carbon dioxide emissions – this additionally applies to motorsport.’
The Supercup season will include eight rounds on the System 1 help invoice, beginning at Imola subsequent month and concluding at Monza in early September. The marketing campaign additionally features a spherical on the streets of Monaco and a visit to Silverstone within the UK. Because the Supercup is a dash race sequence, there will likely be no in-race refuelling underneath the swap to eFuels.