It sounds inconceivable that Europe’s plan to usher in the age of electric vehicles almost went awry because of a prohibitively expensive technology that’s virtually unavailable, but that’s exactly what happened.
For several weeks last month, Germany refused to back the European Union’s effective ban of new combustion-engine cars from 2035, demanding that Brussels protect vehicles running on e-fuels. Given the auto industry employs around 786,000 people in Germany, it’s understandable that Berlin would try to protect jobs threatened by the phasing out of engines. Still, the fight for e-fuels made little sense.
