Oliver Blume is the new CEO of the Volkswagen Group. The 56-year-old German manager will be in charge of leading both the entire German consortium and Porsche itself, where he was active until now, which will mean that in many cases he will apply to the entire group what he has already practiced to “low scale” at the Stuttgart firm, and the first step seems to be synthetic fuels, that is, the so-called e-fuels.
In Hybrids and Electrics we have already dared to baptize this way of managing companies as “The Porsche formula”, because since the manager joined the ranks of the German brand, there has been, practically, no bad decision. And it is this management style that has precisely made him win the position that he will hold from next September 1.
Now, thanks to a statement that the German media Automobilwoche has collected, we have learned that Blume potentially has, among many other intentions, to extend the use of synthetic fuels to all the group’s brands. “We see synthetic fuels as a good complement to electric cars,” commented the German manager.
One of Blume’s most striking achievements during his tenure at Porsche was to launch the synthetic fuel development program while the rest of the Volkswagen Group radically oriented itself towards battery-powered electric cars following the lead of Herbert Diess, since Developing this type of fuel requires a million-dollar investment and doing it with the entire group taking a different direction required approval from both Diess and the German consortium’s board of directors. We well know, however, that Blume has the approval of the Porsche and Piech families.
Synthetic fuels still have a long way to go, since to meet the requirements of the European Union they have to be neutral in terms of emissions both in their production and during their use. For this very reason, Porsche has already built a synthetic fuel production plant in Chile, in an area of the country where strong gusts of wind are constantly recorded, something that they intend to take advantage of to generate energy, and thereby produce the so-called e-fuels. .
Although it is true that it is still early to take anything for granted, Oliver Blume himself has stated that if they are to have a commercial outlet and be produced on a large scale, synthetic fuels they can reach a price of around 2 euros per litersomething that in the current context of gasoline and diesel prices does not seem, at all, a bad option.
