E-FUEL'S ERRAND

Synthetic fuel offers a carbon-neutral way to enjoy existing combustion engines, but is the technology viable? Richard Lane heads to the end of the world, and Porsche's pilot plant, to fill up and find out

Finding words that convey the sublime sensation of melting into the leather-lined, double-glazed privacy of a six-figure super-saloon after three chaotic flights and 37 sleepless hours in transit isn't easy, although I'm sure our hosts have a specific expression for it.

And just as the Germans have terminology for almost any imaginable sentiment, Porsche seems to have a solution for any propulsion-related eventuality. Initiated by the Taycan, its battery-electric offensive is off to a truly enviable start, yet you can still enjoy the howling delights of a 9000rpm fossil-fuelled flat six courtesy of the 911 GT3. The line-up also includes numerous hybrids, and Porsche Engineering is at work getting its 4.4-litre V8 to drink hydrogen and has even simulated a Nordschleife lap time.

But now there's another strand, which is why we're in windy, isolated Punta Arenas. The capital of Chile's southernmost region and sealed off from the rest of the country by glacier, fjord, forest and sea, it sits on the Strait of Magellan. It also feels obscenely far from Weissach but is the ideal place for making hydrocarbon-based fuel without any drilling, fracturing or mining.

We will address the 'how' shortly, but the end product is where our six-figure super-saloon comes in. Sitting outside an airport where commercial airliners share Tarmac with Twin Otters in the deep red of the British Antarctic Survey is our V6-engined Panamera for the next day or two. However, with apparently carbon-neutral, synthetic e-fuel sloshing about its 80-litre tank, this is no ordinary Panamera except that it absolutely is. And that's the point. Porsche says existing engines can operate on this special liquid entirely unaltered.