ROME – The solution being studied to ensure that cars with internal combustion engines, registered from 2035 onwards, can only use e-fuel and not petrol of fossil origin, is digital. No changes, therefore, inside the engine, not even in the fuel supply and control system. And no need to chemically modify synthetic fuels compared to their fossil cousins, to make them recognizable. The refueling will be tracked.
“We already have a technology to build a digital twin of the batteries of electric cars – says Michele Calò, engineer of the Powertrain Solutions division of Bosch in Germany – to keep each component under control and prevent malfunctions from occurring. In the same way, without intervening on the engine or other internal organs of the car, even for new cars with internal combustion engines registered from 2035 onwards, we will be able to digitally track every fuel supply, ensuring that it is made up exclusively of e-fuel”. The fact of not requiring any change in the traction system in order to be used, will allow synthetic fuels, and possibly also biofuels if allowed in the future, to be able to power all cars with internal combustion engines without distinction, including the millions of vehicles of pre-2035 registration, which will probably continue to circulate for many years.
The final supply tracking solution to be offered to automakers by Bosch is not yet named and probably not even fully developed. According to what has been leaked from sources of the European Commission, in fact, it will have to be the subject of a specific approval process dedicated to thermal cars for registration starting from 2035.
The digital tracking of supplies supposes a sort of digital identity card for the fuel, which includes the guarantee of origin from renewable sources of the energy used for the production of hydrogen and for the capture of CO2 from the atmosphere that will be served to its production. Even the refueling pump at the service station will necessarily have to be connected to the computer network, to make the identification of the destination tank of each single liter transparent. Apparently, all very complex and potentially hackable with computer tricks. Looking closer, however, nothing so different from what is already done today with digital payments by credit card or smartphone, nor from the electricity tracking system with which the charging stations of electric cars are equipped.