FEV supports Bonk Motorsport with renewable ‘eFuel Racing 98’ at the Nürburgring 24-hours race

Aachen, Germany, May 2024 – FEV is a leading global development service provider that specializes in sustainable mobility, energy and software solutions. In this context, the technology-open company can also draw on many years of experience in the field of sustainable fuels. As a technical partner, FEV will supply the outfit of Bonk Motorsport with renewable fuel, thus supporting the team’s commitment to sustainability. At the prestigious Nürburgring 24-hours race, the team’s BMW M4 GT4 will compete in the highly acclaimed class for vehicles powered by alternative fuels.

“We are thrilled to partner with team Bonk Motorsport, which has already repeatedly proven its excellent reputation in the racing scene with numerous titles in the touring car and GT sector,” said Dr. Johannes Scharf, Chairman of the Executive Board, FEV Europe. “For us, the team is also the perfect partner in the area of sustainability thanks to its endeavors to achieve the best results. After all, end consumers always benefit from the knowledge gained in motorsport when it is transferred to series production vehicles.”

“With FEV, we have gained a strong partner who, as a technological innovation leader, meets our extreme demands in motorsport and demonstrates a high level of expertise in the field of renewable fuels. This helps us to give racing and mobility as a whole a future through sustainable acting,” said Michael Bonk, Managing Director of Bonk Motorsport.

The renewable ‘eFuel Racing 98’ supplied by FEV is produced by DeCarTrans, a consortium coordinated by FEV which is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMDV). It is the largest project ever funded by the BMDV. The constantly growing consortium currently comprises 15 partners from research, the process engineering and mineral oil industries as well as renowned OEMs. Their goal is to further develop an innovative process to produce synthetic gasoline from methanol, which is produced from biogenic or regenerative sources.

In May, the M4 GT4 of renowned BMW customer sports team Bonk Motorsport completed its first tests using renewable ‘eFuel Racing 98’ on team partner Bertrandt’s test bench. The test runs were carried out in direct comparison with conventional fuel. The initial results showed that the use of renewable fuels is reliably possible even without technical modifications to the vehicle and that the performance data is comparable to that of conventional fuel. In addition, the analyses showed that the number and mass of particles emitted could be reduced by around half compared to conventional fuel. During the production of renewable fuels, the same amount of CO₂ is extracted from the atmosphere as the vehicle emits during operation. Hence, racing the Bonk-BMW on the notorious Nürburgring-Nordschleife in the 24-hours race is completely CO₂-neutral from a well-to-wheel perspective.

“We are not surprised by the latest results. They confirm the fact that renewable fuels and future e-fuels are an important enabler to achieve the climate targets by 2035,” said Dr. Raul Tharmakulasingam, Project Manager Gasoline Powertrains at FEV and project manager of DeCarTrans.

By using renewable fuels, the existing fleet of vehicles with combustion engines can be operated in a directly climate-neutral manner and the transition of mobility can be accelerated, “at the same time as the expansion of electromobility and in parallel with the various important hydrogen applications,” said Tharmakulasingam.

The use of ‘eFuel Racing 98’ from FEV and DeCarTrans under race conditions in the 550 hp Bonk Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 can be experienced during the Nürburgring 24-hours race on June 1 – 2, 2024. Drivers will be Nordschleife experts Michael Schrey, Jörg Weidinger and Martin Kroll.

About FEV

FEV has always pushed the limits.
FEV is a globally leading engineering provider in the automotive industry and internationally recognized leader of innovation across different sectors and industries. Professor Franz Pischinger laid the foundations by combining his background in academia and engineering with a great vision for continual progress. The company has supplied solutions and strategy consulting to the world’s largest automotive OEMs and has supported customers through the entire transportation and mobility ecosystem.

As the world continues to evolve, so does FEV.
That’s why FEV is unleashing its technological and strategic expertise into other areas. It applies its forward thinking to the energy sector. And its software and system know-how will enable the company to lead the way making intelligent solutions available to everyone. FEV brings together the brightest minds from different backgrounds and specialties to find new solutions for both current and future challenges.

But FEV won’t stop there.
Looking ahead, FEV continues to push the limits of innovation. With its highly qualified >7,100 employees at more than 40 locations globally, FEV imagines solutions that don’t just meet today’s needs but tomorrow’s. Ultimately, FEV keeps evolving – to a better, cleaner future built on sustainable mobility, energy and software that drives everything. For the company’s partners, its people and the world.

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