Excellent article in the March 2020 edition of Motorsport magazine.
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/
The article which is all about engine technology and fuel is not on-line yet. But here are some highlights:-
“From 2025, we could be seeing cars powered by two-stroke engines, using a zero-carbon fuel, which are more eco-friendly than Formula E racers….
F1 is also looking to pioneer the use of synthetic fuel made in a laboratory, rather than being drilled out of the ground and refined.
Small-scale facilities have already shown that they can filter carbon out of the air and combine it with hydrogen to form the hydrocarbon chains that make up fuel.
When it’s burnt, that same carbon is then released back into the atmosphere. If surplus renewable energy (wind farms can produce more energy than is needed on a blustery day) is used to make the fuel, the process can be made largely carbon-neutral.
The chemical formula can be altered to replicate existing fuel. But increased benefits come when the engine is designed with the fuel, allowing the use of greater compression ratios and improving efficiency.
Factories to produce the fuel industrially are under construction and Symonds believes that F1 could use it within a few years – despite a higher cost. “As soon as there is enough around we should be doing it and we’re not that far away from what we need”, he says….
EU rules stipulate average carbon dioxide emissions for new cars should not exceed 95g/km. The easiest way for manufacturers to meet the target is to sell more electric cars. However, these figures don’t take into account the emissions released when producing vehicles: several studies suggest that making an electric car produces more carbon than a conventional one.
“This will be rethought again in 2023 – hopefully in the right direction,” says Ulrich Baretzky, director of Audi Sport engine development, and the man behind the petrol and diesel engines that secured 13 wins for Audi at Le Mans. “Then electric vehicles will be dead – or some of them”.
“I certainly think that the internal combustion engine has a long future and I think it has a future that’s longer than a lot of politicians realize because politicians are hanging everything on electric vehicles”.
“There’s nothing wrong with electric vehicles, but there are reasons why they are not the solution for everyone”.
Or Johnson’s ban of petrol and diesel engine motor vehicles is just stupid?
Debate Magazine
