A sustainable mobility strategy should be based on three pillars of propulsion solutions to help achieve the CO₂ targets of the Paris Climate Agreement by 2050: battery electric drives, hydrogen in both fuel cells and combustion engines, as well as e-fuels.

However, current demands in connection with the upcoming EU7 standards call into question the immediate future of the internal combustion engine as early as 2025. At the same time, the general commitment to electromobility is sending clear signals of technological change, and the availability of BEVs has increased significantly in recent years. Battery production costs and real-world ranges have also been significantly improved.

In parallel, numerous efforts are focused on the charging infrastructure, which is seen as a limiting factor, especially in cities and urban masses, due to the lack of fast charging stations. To address this issue, however, modern charging concepts already distinguish between stop-to-charge as peak demand, park-to-charge, which is in the middle range, and finally charging-at-home/at-work as an important contributing factors when charging electric vehicles. On average, vehicles in Germany park for more than 23 hours per day. Therefore, “charging as fast as necessary” should come before “charging as fast as possible.”

However, numerous experts also agree that the challenging CO₂ targets of the Paris 2050 climate protection agreement require a sustainable mobility strategy that incorporates additional powertrain solutions. In addition to battery-electric ones, these are primarily hydrogen powered propulsion systems.

With today’s advanced stage of fuel cell development hydrogen is not only fit for heavy commercial vehicles, such as trucks or buses, but also increasingly in passenger cars —particularly in order to reach more appealing production quantities and thus costs. Furthermore, as a complement to fuel cells, hydrogen combustion engines are another important building block for the defossilization of the mobility sector due to their extremely low NOx and CO₂ emissions and their quick availability.

E-fuels in internal combustion engines are important for CO₂-neutral operation of existing fleets. This key element in climate-neutral mobility is only just starting to be discussed on the EU level. In particular, the “backward compatibility” – also in industrially less developed countries – makes e-fuels an important factor for achieving the globally set climate targets.