[theshrike79]

There is a dream that synthetic fuels or hydrogen will suddenly get their own Elon Musk who will drive down the wholesale price to a viable level.

But in the end (25 years+) I think synthetics will be used for hobbyists to run their vintage vehicles on track days and weekends.

[duped]

Hydrogen has the second largest manufacturer of vehicles on the planet behind it and its still not viable.

[kuschku]

That's actually an interesting use case, vintage vehicles, old diesel trucks used near radio telescopes, etc. That said, I doubt that market would be large enough for the amount of money currently being invested in it.

[replygirl]

motorsport is a quarter trillion dollar industry, about 50x the size of the synthetics market, and there are already a ton of teams engaged in research partnerships with fuel companies

just at the highest level: formula e is floundering; f1's 2026 regulations will introduce a 100% sustainable fuel while making the electric part of the powertrain _less_ sophisticated (removing the MGU-h, so no more energy recapture from turbo spindown)

all three of these seem perfectly realistic:

- synthetics take off widely

- synthetics don't take off, but get far enough along that they are competitive with existing popular race fuels (which go for $10-15/gal)

- synthetics don't take off, but they get far enough along that speciality fuel producers can stand up their own supply chains with marginal r&d spend, but can't compete with other race fuels... for the first 5-10 years, then the race fuels are made illegal