From 11 to 13 September 2026, the Bernina Gran Turismo, a historic motorsport event with a tradition of almost 100 years, took place in the Engadin and Valposchiavo. What was different this year is where the fuel came from. Drivers filled up at a Synhelion fuelling station near the paddock at Bernina Ospizio, and the gasoline in the pumps was renewable synthetic gasoline, produced at Synhelion’s industrial-scale plant DAWN in Germany. Synhelion is a SPIN member and SPIN board member.
The Swiss solar-fuel company was an official fuel supplier of the event and one of its main sponsors, and it describes the delivery as the start of a long-term collaboration. According to Synhelion, it was also the first time renewable fuel was introduced at the event.
Why a motorsport event is a useful test
It is tempting to file this under lifestyle marketing. In our view, that would miss the point. Historic cars were built decades before anyone wrote a fuel standard, and their owners care a great deal about how the car sounds and pulls. If a fuel does not behave like the fossil gasoline the engine was built for, the driver notices quickly.
According to Synhelion, the fuel can be used directly in conventional internal combustion engines without modifications, and the cars kept their existing engines and driving character. Luca Moiso, Director of the Bernina Gran Turismo, said: “Bernina Gran Turismo connects the past, present, and future.” Philipp Furler, Synhelion’s Co-Founder and Co-CEO, said: “Bernina Gran Turismo made this tangible: we can change the fuel without changing what people value about driving.”
The fleet that will not be electrified overnight
That sentence is, in our view, the real news here, and it applies beyond the paddock. Electrification is the right answer for most new passenger cars, and nothing in this story changes that. But there are vehicles that are unlikely to carry a battery any time soon: historic cars, motorcycles and boats, specialist vehicles, and the large existing fleet of combustion cars that will keep driving for years. Every litre of fossil gasoline they burn is a litre that could in principle be renewable.
According to Synhelion, its synthetic gasoline is fully compliant with national and international standards. A drop-in fuel of this kind can use the same engines, tankers, pumps and filling stations. That is exactly the property that makes it useful for the existing fleet, and it is the reason why SPIN argues that renewable fuels and electrification are complements, not rivals.
What “up to 100 per cent” means, and what it depends on
Synhelion states that its renewable synthetic gasoline reduces net CO₂ emissions by up to 100 per cent compared with fossil gasoline. The “up to” matters. How close a given batch comes to zero depends on how the energy was generated and where the carbon came from; Synhelion’s press release does not state the carbon source of the fuel used at the event.
One condition remains non-negotiable from a Power-to-X perspective: synthetic gasoline only makes climate sense when the carbon it contains is recycled CO₂ from biogenic, atmospheric or industrial sources, and when that recycling displaces fossil carbon instead of providing a reason to burn more of it.
A busy month for a Swiss company
The Bernina weekend follows a dense fortnight for Synhelion. On 1 September it announced Saipem for pre-FEED engineering of a plant with a capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year at RWE’s Hürth-Knapsack site; on 8 September it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Moroccan government for a plant of 100,000 tonnes per year in the province of Tan-Tan (we analysed both here). In July, Synhelion announced that it had been selected for funding from North Rhine-Westphalia’s Produktives.NRW programme, which draws on EU Just Transition Fund money, for a commercial demonstration plant in Jülich. According to Synhelion, the company has already delivered synthetic fuels to customers for cars, aircraft and ships and is now scaling towards commercial production.
In our reading, the announcements describe a company moving on two tracks at once. One track is engineering and finance. The other is demand and acceptance: showing drivers, fleet operators and regulators that the product exists and works. An event in Graubünden does not build a plant in Morocco, but a fuel that people have seen working in a car they love is, in our view, easier to write into a blending mandate.
The Swiss angle
The fuel used at the Bernina was produced in Germany, where Synhelion’s first industrial plant stands. In Switzerland, regulatory obstacles remain. SPIN’s position paper (status 14 July 2026) lists 42 problems and proposed solutions. One example it gives: synthetic fuels certified under EU law do not qualify for the Swiss mineral oil tax exemption, which the paper puts at a cost disadvantage of about 70 centimes per litre.
It would be good if the Swiss regulatory framework caught up, so that the next time renewable fuel powers a race in the Swiss Alps, it can be produced in Switzerland as well.
Source: Synhelion press release of 15 September 2026. Feature image: Synhelion’s Co-CEOs and Co-Founders Philipp Furler and Gianluca Ambrosetti in front of the Synhelion fuelling station at the Bernina Gran Turismo 2026. Photo: Synhelion.
🤖 AI transparency: This text was created using AI, reviewed and approved by a human. Photos: Synhelion / Andrea Klainguti.
Power-to-X Congress Switzerland 2026 — «Reality Check with Net Zero». Join us on 22 September 2026, 10–18h, at the Kursaal Bern. Co-organised by energie-cluster.ch and SPIN, with partner Réseau H2 Suisse Romande. Learn more and register →