The future of transport will not be (only) electric

I am a big, big fan of electric cars, and proud owner and driver of one of the very first Zoe electric cars designed by Renault. Until recently, it was obvious to me that EVs were the future of transportation.

My first doubt came in 2020. As part of a business event organized in Versailles by the French President, I was by chance sitting for dinner next to Mr Toyoda, the President of Toyota Motors. Of course, we talked electric cars... I love their concept of hybrid cars, but asked him when Toyota or Lexus would have their first 100% electric cars. His answer was that it wasn't easy. Because Toyota makes millions of cars, and EVs require so much precious and rare metals, in the current state of technology EVs would remain a luxury product, not for the mass market.

I also knew about hydrogen. but having worked for so long in high-tech, I get a 6th sense for hype... and everything I read and heard about hydrogen cars had hype painted all over it. Nobody was explaining that most of the energy required for H2 cars is wasted by compressing the gas, that the fuel cells require pure air, and tons of other fundamental problems. I felt depressed... would clean cars ever become a reality ?

Then my perspective changed 180° after a conversation with Alain Lunati and Norbert Lartigue, who manage SP3H , a company that makes small sensors capable of instantly analyzing any fuel. I asked Norbert if he believed in hydrogen powered cars.

Norbert, a well known automotive industry expert, replied "What you want is 100% clean engines using only renewable energy? Did you know that you can make synthetic fuels out of hydrogen ... it solves all your problems! You can even use it for planes, eFuels require only minor changes to current engine technology and the existing industrial ecosystem is ready". Wow ! Hope again... and it could even become a mass production reality in short term! In fact, it struck me that becoming the new Saudi-Arabia of clean fuel was probably one of the biggest opportunities for any economy in the next 10 years.

Surprisingly though, until recently, there has been little political attention to the eFuel alternative. Outside of Germany which has already put in place public funding to accelerate production of eFuels, for most governments 'clean transport' is synonymous with electric cars and planes, and R&D money goes to gaseous-hydrogen.

A recent French government decree of Nov 17th 2021 is perhaps a game changer. It limits access to city centers not only to electric vehicles ("category 1"), but also to hybrid vehicles using 100% bio fuel ("category 1bis"). For the first time the French government is also beginning to rationalize public subsidies to clean transport so that it will target ALL clean technologies, not just electric: the measure with most impact is the accelerated amortization of trucks/buses which are using ONLY clean fuels (and can prove it by installing a probe that will force the engine to safety mode if using a classic fuel). There is still some way to go as for now some clean fuels are excluded (e.g. HVO), but in all logic progressively the legal framework is expected to become technology agnostic, focusing only on the outcome: carbon neutral transport.

The financial incentive created by these recent measures have considerable impact on the truck and bus industry. it is expected that by 2030 60% of public transport in France will use carbon neutral vehicles, out of which 50% (about 30K units) will use clean fuels. All major truck brands are now running to get ready... and other countries are expected to adopt similar incentives across Europe. This is a much faster transition to clean transport than what a "electric only" approach would allow. It is also a lot cleaner, when considering emissions in the whole chain and accounting for production and recycling of batteries.

What's the next step ? Now that demand for eFuels is on its way to a boom and the economic model is in place, the best use of public money would probably be to make sure that the EU can produce its own synthetic fuels from solar panels and offshore windfarms. We have all the know-how, and some of the very best chemical industry in the world.

I still love my Zoe and happily drive it around Paris. But now my view of the future of transport is completely different. There will be more and more EVs of course (with considerable progress on battery technology expected in the next 5 years), but it will not consist only of EVs. The mix will probably be a 50/50 for ordinary cars, and nearly 100% of high power engines (truck, buses, boats and planes) will continue to use fuel engines (with light hybridation to reuse braking energy). These eFuels are a lot more pure (precise chemical characteristics) than fossil fuel, and the perfect tuning of engines made possible by SP3H probes nearly eliminates all pollutants (such as NOx).

After all, Toyota's continued investment on hybrid engines was probably visionary :)