Paddy Lowe is a legend in the F1 paddock. From his earlier days at the Williams F1 team when they were dethroning Ayrton Senna in the McLaren to his stint at McLaren and then Mercedes, he is amongst the most influential technical figures in the history of the sport. But after his last unfortunate stint at the Williams team, it seems like he is unlikely to return to F1 any time soon. There is a reason for it. He has founded a company called Zero Petroleum which is the first company in the UK working on synthetic petroleum.
"So we started a company, my partner is Nilay Shah who is a professor of chemical engineering at Imperial College. And we will be making synthetic petroleum. We are the only in the UK doing that," he said in the F1 Beyond the Grid podcast.
"Not a lot of people know this but petroleum which we all know well and use all over the place. It is very difficult to come up with a product that hasn't been made with petroleum or some contribution from it. It is ubiquitous," he explained.
He spoke about how petroleum could be made in a synthetic format scale. He also felt that in the long run on synthetic petroleum will be a true replacement for fossil fuels.
"You can make petroleum from air and water. You just reverse the process. Photosynthesis in plants converts carbon dioxide and water to oxygen and hydrocarbons, you can do that industrially, to create synthetic petroleum. Because petroleum is legacy photosynthesis. But we can industrially manufacture synthetic petroleum. There is a lot of talk about electrification. And everybody is thinking the only answer to anything is to electrify," he said.
Lowe and his partner are particularly focused on the airline sector which is going to the industry that will need synthetic fuels the most. Electrifying aircrafts is a challenge because of the weight of the batteries. He also said that eventually all motorsports will end up using synthetic fuels.
"There are many applications and the obvious one is a long-range aircraft which cannot be electrified because batteries are too heavy. So electricity is terrific but it cannot be stored efficiently," said Lowe.
"An electric aeroplane that would fly from let's say London to Dubai, it just doesn't function. An aircraft uses energy in proportion to its weight. The heavier you make it, the more energy it needs," he explained.
Lowe has had two stints at Williams, and was also in world championship winning efforts of Mercedes and McLaren
Lowe said that for high-density formats, synthetic petroleum will be the only fuel that will scale. He also believed that it is quite feasible just that people haven't focused on it. He also believed that it would be ideal for F1 and all forms of motorsport.
F1 starting in 2022 will have some kind of biofuel in the mixture. There are many conversations about what would be the powertrain for the next set of engine regulations - for which many want a fully electric powertrain. But Lowe believes synthetic fuels could do the trick. He is also open to offering his product to F1.
"Yeah we will use it in Formula 1, we will see it in all branches of motorsport because like aeroplanes, the same with racing cars, but motorsport if you drill in, is a display of energy. A Formula 1 car is a manifestation of energy in a dense format and it wouldn't work electrically. The numbers just don't stack to make entertaining motorsport on full-scale tracks as the public expect," he said.
In the broad ranging podcast he also shed light on his second stint at Williams which admitted that he didn't enjoy at all. He also said that he was happy that the Williams family had sold the team because the financial struggles had been around for a while and masked the true extent of the issues the team had for years as they had the dominant Mercedes engine at the back of their cars.
