BMW, Toyota kick off renewable fuel pilot scheme

Theoretically, there is a way forward for petrol - now we just need some real-world proof it works at scale

By PH Staff / Wednesday, 15 July 2026 / Loading comments

You might think that 100 per cent renewable gasoline is the classic great white hope; hypothetically possible, but not really likely or practicable or profitable at scale. Well, BMW, Toyota, Bosch and Repsol beg to differ. They’ve just launched a six-month initiative in Spain to provide real-world evidence that such fuel - specifically Repsol’s Nexa 95 petrol - is sufficiently available via current infrastructure to support a fleet of unmodified vehicles.

Repsol’s what now? Nexa 95 was a new one on us, too, but apparently the Spanish petroleum giant has been studying the problem for the last 20 years and has come up with a petrol of ‘100 per cent renewable origin’ which is already available in 1,600 service stations. It is not, clearly, a more newfangled (and difficult to produce) synthetic petrol, but rather a product of organic waste, including things like biomass and used cooking oil.

This does not make the resulting fuel CO2 neutral, of course, but the upside (as we’ve been told previously with renewable sources) is that because the CO2 released in their use is equal to the CO2 originally absorbed by the organic matter when alive, Repsol claims a 70 per cent reduction in emissions compared with conventional gasoline. Moreover - and this really is the trick - it can manufacture Nexa 95 at ‘an industrial scale’, and has been doing so since it announced the technological breakthrough last year.

As you can imagine, Repsol would very much like the role of renewable fuels to be recognised at a regulatory level (unsurprisingly, it mentions accelerating their widespread use via ‘a favourable tax framework’) and especially with how it might pertain to the future of combustion engines. It is this latter aspect that has doubtless helped it receive the support of Toyota and BMW, two global carmakers very much at the forefront of the petrol-ain’t-going-nowhere movement, and well used to collaborating.

Accordingly, the pilot scheme is less about ‘can’ Nexa 95 work at scale (you pump it the same as any other E10 grade petrol, and it works in any modern engine, after all) but ‘how’ it performs in the real world. So BMW and Toyota supply the 20-vehicle fleet, Repsol supplies the fuel and Bosch supplies a digital fuel tracking system to certify usage for the duration of the six-month scheme. This is important because ultimately the participants want to ‘generate robust data and insights that will support ongoing European policy discussions’. In other words, it’s a lobbying tool.

“We believe renewable fuels can play a key role alongside electrification in reducing CO? emissions. As the transition progresses, it is becoming clear that there is a growing risk that 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2035 may not be fully achieved,” said a Toyota spokesperson. “In such a scenario, renewable fuels can help bridge the gap to deliver carbon neutrality, especially when combined with hybrid and plug-in hybrid technologies. This pilot aims to demonstrate how renewable fuels can make a meaningful and sustainable contribution to decarbonisation today, for both new and existing vehicles.” Fingers crossed, eh?