Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by scotchmi_st 201 days ago
Interestingly there are discussions about moving back to having the majority of the power from IC engines as soon as the end of the decade, with synthetic fuels. Personally I can’t wait.
2 comments

What's happening with synthetic fuels? I read while back Porsche investing in factories to produce but that was a few years ago, is it a bit of snake oil wrt to it's alleged green credentials or simply can't scale at an acceptable cost?
The World Endurance Championship has been using synthetic fuels since 2022 from TotalEnergies (https://competition.totalenergies.com/en/auto/endurance/wec/...), there's also Sustain (https://sustain-fuels.com/) in the UK as well who seem to be growing reasonably well but are a mix of sustainable & fossil fuels. There's some variability of how green they are, you still need to burn something so there's going to be emissions as well but they've been validated in the motorsport labs as being viable and they're starting to make their way to consumers.
I would like that too, but it's highly unlikely to happen since Audi and GM just entered the engine making business in F1 for the start of 2026 and they invested shit tonne of millions into engine R&D specifically for the new turbo-V6 regulations, so moving the goalposts again so soon would just rug-pull their investments, and such the FIA assured them the new regulations are gonna stay for a while. Bummer.