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Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has expressed his desire to keep the internal combustion engine alive in the upper echelons of motorsport, despite pushes from some automakers and governments to fully embrace electric vehicles.
In an in-depth interview with Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore published on Monday, Domenicali said F1 “will never go electric” when asked how the sport fits in in an era of sustainability and electric mobility.
He added that F1 aims to become carbon neutral by 2030, and that this lofty goal can be achieved by moving to 100% sustainable fuels — something F1 and partners are working on in time for the 2026 season.
Sustainable fuels, often called E-fuels, are fuels whose loop is completely carbon neutral so that the amount of carbon used to produce the fuel is equal to the carbon emitted from an internal combustion engine when burning the fuel. The production process usually involves some form of carbon capture technology.
Stefano Domenicali
Key partners in the F1 sustainable fuels project include motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, as well as Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company and main sponsor of F1. Porsche and partners already have a pilot plant in Chile that produces sustainable fuels.
But F1 isn’t just developing fuels for use in its race cars. This fuel is being developed with the intention that it will eventually be produced in sufficient quantities to supply the majority of cars worldwide.
In his interview, Domenicali said that by 2035, when several governments including the European Union have mandated that only vehicles with zero carbon emissions can be sold, there will still be around two billion cars on the roads equipped with internal combustion engines, and that these carbon emissions have the potential offset by sustainable fuels, such as those developed by F1.
Zero emissions can be achieved without having to replace engines or throw away the entire existing vehicle fleet,” he said.
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