New F1 regulations suggest carmakers aren’t done with the internal combustion engine yet – NBC Chicago

• New sports regulations suggest that carmakers are not pinning all their hopes on electrification.
• In 2026, F1 cars will be powered by hybrid engines with a 50:50 split between electricity and combustion energy.
• Importantly, the combustion engine will be powered by synthetic e-fuels.

If you want to look into the future of car production, Formula 1’s rule book is often a good place to start.

Regulations requiring seat belts and crumple zones in racing cars soon led to their adoption in road vehicles, while teams’ KERS (kinetic energy recovery) systems to capture and convert energy lost during braking led to hybrid cars, buses and taxis became lighter and more efficient.

However, the new sports regulations suggest that car manufacturers are not pinning all their hopes on electrification. In 2026, F1 cars will be powered by hybrid engines with a 50:50 split between electricity and combustion energy; most importantly, the internal combustion engine will be powered by synthetic e-fuels.

“We want to tackle climate change and this is (synthetic fuels) the way to do it,” Pat Symonds, former F1 technical director when he was still with the organization, told CNBC.

“This is different from electrification, and since we started this project a few years ago, more and more people are realizing that there is a parallel path to decarbonizing transport.”

One changing strategy is Honda, which has announced a return to F1 in 2026 after leaving the sport in 2021 to “strive towards achieving carbon neutrality by 2050”. Another is Audi, which left Formula E in 2021 to join F1 in 2026, the same year in which the German automotive concern will stop producing new cars with combustion engines and will only release electric vehicles.

At first glance, investing heavily in the development of an F1 engine that will never be used in a road car seems contradictory, but some believe F1’s automotive partners are hedging their electrification assumptions. “No company follows a linear path to sustainability,” Madeleine Orr, an assistant professor of sports ecology at the University of Toronto, told CNBC. “If Audi is looking for R&D and needs to improve some products, F1 is a great way to do that.”

One of the products Audi is working on is synthetic e-fuels, which use electricity generated from renewable sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen before combining it with carbon dioxide. Currently, e-fuels are too expensive for most road users, but manufacturers point out that they provide a cleaner alternative for industries that find it difficult to use electricity, such as aviation and shipping.

Some see it as a Trojan horse disrupting the electrification of road vehicles.

“Producing e-fuels is a much less efficient use of renewable energy than powering an electric vehicle,” said Alex Keynes, car policy manager at climate group Transport and Environment.

“These fuels are critical to decarbonizing industries that cannot be easily electrified, but this is an extremely inefficient use of renewable energy in cars compared to battery power.”

Without denying the engineering arguments for electrification, e-fuel proponents counter that it ignores economic realities. “The world is not driven by performance, but by market and ultimately price,” Paddy Lowe, a veteran F1 engineer and founder of e-fuel company Zero, told CNBC. “When I plug in an electric car, I’m using the most expensive electricity in the world in terms of infrastructure requirements, not everyone can afford it,” he said.

Car buyers seem to agree. Electric vehicle sales in the U.S. were flat in the first quarter, while year-over-year sales in Europe fell 5.2% in March as falling inflation weighed on the sector’s growth. This may just be a watershed moment for electrification, but it has forced some manufacturers to put the brakes on their plans, with Ford pushing back the release of its new electric SUV to 2027.

The prospect of increasingly isolationist policies pursued by lawmakers will also weigh heavily on manufacturers. US presidential candidate Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw environmental subsidies and impose 100% import tariffs on electric vehicles if he returns to office. Meanwhile, the German Free Democratic Party (FDP) has blocked the EU-wide phase-out of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars after 2035, demanding an amendment to allow e-fuel vehicles. “We in Germany have mastered the technology of the internal combustion engine better than anyone else in the world,” exclaimed the FDP Minister of Transport after the release of the block. “It makes sense to keep this technology in our hands while some questions about climate-neutral mobility remain unanswered.”

But not all German carmakers supported the bloc. In mid-2023, Mercedes CEO Ola Kallenius doubled down on the company’s plans to prioritize the development of electric vehicles, pointing out that e-fuels cannot compete with electric vehicles on emissions.

This put the German manufacturer at odds with F1. In early 2023, senior sports figures are understood to have met with politicians in Brussels to explain the benefits of e-fuels and even wrote to the office of Frans Timmermans, then EU vice-president and climate action commissioner, to oppose banning “combustion engines” in favor of electric vehicles, describing it as “a huge one-sided bet on a relatively new technology.”

Asked about the motivation for the meetings, Liam Parker, F1’s director of corporate relations and communications, told CNBC that “it was to clarify our solution to decarbonize road vehicles and further demonstrate F1’s relevance in the automotive sector.”

Some critics, however, mentioned more sinister motivations. “Given that most carmakers have opted for electrification anyway, the only sectors that will benefit from an e-fuels amendment are oil and gas, as it protects their existing oil refining interests,” Keynes said. In 2020, Formula 1 signed a sponsorship deal with Saudi Aramco worth $45 million per year, which stipulated that the partnership would work towards “the development of sustainable fuels”.

F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has denied accusations that F1 acted on behalf of Aramco, made to him by CNBC. “We don’t lobby for anyone, we think about the best future for everyone. “This is a very complex topic and we need to be more careful than many people who speak out without realizing the complexity of this transformation,” he said. “

Regardless of their impact on the road, Domenicali is confident that sustainable fuels will play a big role in the future of his sport. “F1 has always been seen as home to the lightest and best cars, so if renewable fuels are successful we could return to a situation where the battery is no longer needed,” he said.

Correction: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Stefano Domenicali’s name.