The fuel made from air and water that could power F1 cars

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Supercars that run on air and water—that’s the dream for synthetic fuel manufacturer Zero. The UK-based company says it is planning on powering a Formula One team with a more environmentally friendly fuel. The company behind it announced a partnership with Formula One team Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber earlier this year. The move aligns with the motor sport’s aim of going carbon-neutral by 2030. Zero has a small plant in Oxfordshire that manufactures the fuel. The next step will be a commercial-scale factory in the next few years. “So there’s two things that make this feel special. First of all, we make it just from air, water, and electricity. [...] But when we end up, the fuel is identical or even better than existing fossil fuel. So it will work in today's cars, trains, airplanes, and the like,” explains Nilay Shah, Chief Scientific Officer at Zero. The fuel is made by extracting carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water using renewable energy. These are combined to create carbon monoxide, which is processed with catalysts to create synthetic fuel. The company was founded by Paddy Lowe, who spent decades working in Formula One. He forecasts that the first commercially available synthetic fuel will be around four to five times more expensive than traditional fuels, but expects that cost to drop rapidly over the next ten years. He says the sport will be a pioneer of synthetic fuel. “It's world-famous for pioneering new technologies, new ideas, and then eventually bringing them to the mainstream. And so it will be with fuel,” he says. By Formula One’s own figures, its carbon footprint was 223,031 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent for the 2022 season, down 13 percent since 2018. But still a way off from net zero. And the fuel the cars burn is just a tiny slice of those emissions, says Lowe. “This is a point often made that the biggest carbon footprint in Formula One is not with the cars, but with, for instance, the spectators coming in their cars or all of the freight and the people coming across the globe in airplanes. True. But you do have to start somewhere.” This article was provided by The Associated Press.