Did the Porsche boss Oliver Blume influence the FDP chairman Christian Lindner during the coalition negotiations of the traffic light parties? The ZDF satirical program "Die Anstalt" claims to have found out.
"We have a very large share in the fact that the e-fuels were included in the coalition agreement. We were a main driver there, with very close contact to the coalition parties. Christian Lindner has kept me up to date almost every hour in the last few days." , the show quotes the Porsche boss.
According to a fact check of the program, the statement by Oliver Blume comes from the Porsche works meeting on June 29, 2022. The editors have the evidence to verify this statement. When asked by stern, ZDF did not want to comment further on what exactly the evidence looks like. The information from the ZDF program is given additional explosiveness by a report on Friday evening, according to which Blume is to inherit Herbert Diess as head of the VW Group after his surprising departure from September 1st.
According to "Merkur", a Porsche spokesman denies this exchange. It didn't exist like that.
Christian Lindner and his team have now reacted on Twitter. "CL's (Christian Lindner, editor's note) position on e-fuels has been known for years. Accordingly, in June he commented on the EU's plan to phase out combustion engines and within the BReg (federal government, editor's note .) acted. There was no previous contact with Mr. Blume and no other influence."
The Volksagen Group, to which Porsche belongs, also responded on Twitter. "Christian Lindner is known to be a Porsche fan, which makes us happy. But there was no live ticker." Plus a wink smiley.
The background is the decision of the EU that from 2035 only emission-free new cars should be sold. That would be the end for petrol and diesel vehicles – unless they use e-fuels. Germany had pushed for this option to be left open in the agreement. The Federal Government and the FDP had agreed on this.
E-fuels are synthetic fuels that are mostly obtained from water and carbon dioxide using large amounts of electricity. The fuels have properties similar to those of petrol or diesel. "E-fuels are a sham solution, they are inefficient, not automatically climate-neutral and will remain expensive and limited in availability for the foreseeable future," criticizes Antje von Brook, Managing Director of BUND.
E-fuels are only climate-neutral if they are produced with green electricity. Compared to diesel or petrol, they do not release any new CO2.
Doubts come from the European think tank "Transport and Environment". According to "tagesschau.de", researchers have calculated in a study that cars "that are operated 100 percent with synthetic fuels emit significantly more CO2 over their entire service life than purely electric cars". Experts also consider e-fuels and the discussions about them to be nonsensical.
Further source: tagesschau.de
