Automaker Stellantis has said that it believes we will see internal combustion vehicles used on the roads until the year 2050, and that until they are all replaced by fully electric vehicles, we will need a technology to contain their carbon emissions.
The maker of Fiat, Peugeot and Jeep, said that according to research it performed with Saudi oil giant Aramco, vehicles in Europe use 24 types of internal combustion engines which can utilize e-fuels without modifications.
As the third-largest carmaker by sales, Stellantis has pledged to make all of its new car sales in Europe be battery-electric by 2030, despite the European Union exempting cars which run on e-fuels from its 2035 deadline to cease producing new carbon dioxide-emitting cars.
On Thursday, Christian Mueller, Stellantis’ Senior Vice President of Propulsion Systems for the EMEA region said that of the new ICE vehicles being sold by Stellantis between now and 2029, many will continue to remain on the road more than 2 decades from now.
He said, “We have to really take care about our inventory fleet,” adding that the long lifespan of combustible engine vehicles will make the development of e-fuels produced by renewable energy much more important.
In a briefing he said, “I think 25% of our vehicles are still in use after 20 years. Hence, this kind of exposure time to e-fuels is considerable, very considerable.”
According to company estimates, Stellantis engine types which will be compatible with e-fuels will be present in about 28 million vehicles in Europe, which will translate into a possible CO2 emission reduction in the EU of as much as 400 million metric tons between 2025 and 2050.
However skeptics point to the high cost and low availability of e-fuels, saying they are not really a viable option.
According to Aramco’s Transport Chief Technologist Amer Amer in 2025 Aramco will begin production of e-fuels from two of the company’s demonstration plants in Saudi Arabia and Spain.
Executives at Aramco and Stellantis said that they expect to see increasing e-fuel availability and decreasing prices due to favorable taxation of the products by the European Union, “in the future,” however they declined to provide further details.
