P1 Fuels: the pioneer of sustainable fuels in the automobile industry

At the Goodwood Festival of Speed last weekend, Sebastian Vettel continued his “Race Without Trace” campaign by firing up his 1992 and 1993 Williams and McLaren, respectively, with Carbon Neutral Fuel (CNF) by P1 Fuels. It reinvigorated the memories of the F1 purists who grew up watching and listening to these beautiful machines every other weekend whilst showing the world that it could be done, literally, without leaving a trace. The applications of CNF go beyond just two laps of a demo run; cars, buses, and airplanes are some of the most used modes of transport today - they all run on fuel, fossil for the majority part, contributing to high levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

What if there was a sustainable substitute for fossil fuel that could be used in vehicles currently on the roads? P1 Fuels’ mission is to have a fossil-free fuel available to the public sooner rather than later.

While EVs might seem like the better option for a passenger car right now, the environmental impact would still not be as great as we think, considering they only make up 1.3% of the global vehicle circulation.

By introducing Carbon-Neutral Fuels (CNF) or low-carbon fuels, existing vehicles, airplanes, and ships can contribute to lowering global GHG emissions immediately! 

CNF is part of a large family of partly-or fully-synthetic fuels that are made from chemical components derived from either second-generation feedstocks like bio-alcohols from agricultural/urban waste biomass, or industrial catalytic conversion of syngas (CO+H2), commonly known as e-Fuels/Power to Liquid (PtL). This works by capturing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it until it is released upon fuel usage. 

Read the whitepaper here to learn more about the technology behind P1 Fuels.

Some advantages of using CNF are the reduction of WtW emissions by replacing fossil fuels in the current vehicle fleet, the availability of feedstocks and renewable energy across the world, making CNF production a circular economy, and the usage of CNF as drop-in fuels for vehicles/aviation/ships need only minor hardware modification and almost no modification to the existing refuelling infrastructure.

The process of developing a fossil-free fuel is complex, needing to take into consideration the fuel specifications (based on consumers), engine characteristics like design, the fuel’s material compatibility with the engine, product stability and reproducibility for reaching high performance, and affordable product pricing to make CNF a potentially zero entry cost for end users. 

P1 Fuels has worked with the FIA to publish the new fuel technical regulation, AppJ.252.9, and is also the sole fuel supplier to the FIA World Rally Championship for the 2022-2024 seasons.

This fuel was available in September 2021 for testing in the Rally1, Rally2, and Rally3 engines. During the testing, fuel characteristics and their interactions with the vehicle and engine were investigated to understand limitations and find room for improvement for the next generation.

One of the reasons motorsport is the best place to experiment is because of the competitive nature of the sport, driving innovation and leading to improved performance and efficiency of sustainable fuel types. With this in mind, the FossilFree100 WRC fuel was tested alongside the 2021 WRC Fossil fuel in the Rally1 Car. The results found that the fossil-free fuel works just as well as the other, with minor deviations like ignition delay. 

With the knowledge of how fossil-free fuels work in motorsport, the composition can be modified for commercial usage. P1 Fuels has already created different levels (15-100%) of fossil-free fuel formulations that have worked just as well as 100% fossil fuel when tested.

These fuel types also align with European (EN228) and Japanese (JIS) standards. Apart from this, P1 Fuels has also developed drop-in solutions for multiple applications like vintage engines — most recently used in Goodwood Festival of Speed Hill — GT, touring cars, motorbikes, karting, and more.

An advanced EN228 CNF gasoline based on 100% fossil-free components, P1 Eco1000Pro, was tested in a commercial European C-segment passenger car. The results showed that this fuel met multiple European fuel standards for usage in road vehicles. However, for further investigations into the fuel’s potential for standard vehicle application, more in-depth research on the combustion, emission behaviour, performance and efficiency is needed to better this product before it hits the market.

Alongside partnering with the FIA for FIA WRC and WTCR, P1 Fuels also partnered with Gumball 3000 for their Gumball 3000 European Tour from Edinburgh to Porto Montenegro, held from 11th to 16th June 2023.