BMW boss: ‘categorical ban on combustion tech is wrong’

“We continue to believe that a categorical ban on combustion technology is wrong,” said the boss of BMW, Oliver Zipse. Yowser.

Delivering BMW’s half-term report – lots of straight As, especially in EVs where it’s grown by 34 per cent – Zipse waded into the ongoing debate around ‘e-fuels’. Those are synthetic fuels that look like ordinary dino-juice but are made from renewable sources.

Cars that run on these synthetic fuels will survive the (current) 2035 ban on combustion-engined cars. Zipse wants a quicker adoption of these resource-intensive fuels now, though.

“The most impactful contributions to climate protection are those we can make today,” he said. “In other words, every tonne of CO2 we can save today – not sometime in the future – counts.”

That means fuels like E 25 or HVO100 could “immediately improve the carbon footprint of the existing fleet of more than 250 million vehicles in Europe”.

He warned however, that if nothing is done to “ramp-up” the adoption of these low CO2 fuels, “this would be a deliberate ban on combustion engines through the back door”. That’s because if you have an ICE car running on e-fuel post-2035, and… there’s no e-fuel, it’s sorta pointless. At least according to Zipse.

There’s a fair bit of noise around e-fuels. Ferrari reckons there’s a future for it, Porsche has poured lots of money into the technology, and Formula One will eventually use e-fuels to run its next-generation of racers.

What are e-fuels? And how are they made?

However, making the stuff is hugely resource-intensive, and there’s the argument that it’s a bit of a distraction; that when you consider road transport’s combined CO2 emissions, it’s better to use green energy to decarbonise other, bigger polluters first rather than spending it to make supercars carbon neutral.

Anyhoo, despite this warning that the ‘categorical’ ICE-ban is wrong, BMW remains committed to electrification, noting how “e-mobility will continue to be the core drive technology of the future and our primary growth driver”.

Which means hybrids like the new X3, and a brand new range of electric cars under the ‘Neue Klasse’ banner, the first of which will be… an X car.