German hydrogen funding twice oversubscribed: 526 applications for 40 refuelling stations

When Germany's funding call for hydrogen refuelling stations closed on 30 June, 526 applications had been submitted: 71 for stations and 455 for vehicles. Together they requested some €455 million in support. Available: €220 million. The call is more than twice oversubscribed.

That is a striking signal in a year when the German hydrogen network was actually shrinking. Awards are expected in the second half of 2026; by mid-August nothing had been announced.

What is on the table

The call runs under the National Innovation Programme for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology, financed by the German transport ministry, coordinated by NOW GmbH and administered by Projektträger Jülich. The goal: up to forty refuelling stations and around four hundred hydrogen trucks.

• Up to 50 percent of the investment in a station, capped at €4 million.
• Up to 80 percent of the price difference with a comparable diesel, capped at €3 million for the vehicles.
• A maximum of €7 million per combined package.

That word combined is the heart of the design. Station and fleet must be applied for together, and at least ten percent of a station's daily capacity must be covered by vehicles that will actually refuel there. This is Germany's attempt to break the chicken-and-egg problem that has held hydrogen mobility back for years: no trucks without stations, no stations without trucks.

Interest was strong enough that the deadline was extended in April from 31 May to 30 June.

The conditions reveal the direction

More interesting than the amounts are the requirements. A funded station must dispense hydrogen at both 700 and 350 bar, deliver at least a thousand kilos a day, sit within ten kilometres of a TEN-T core network exit or inside an urban node, and stand at least a hundred kilometres from the next such station.

That goes further than European rules demand. The EU Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, AFIR for short, requires a publicly accessible hydrogen station every 200 kilometres along the TEN-T core network by the end of 2030, with at least one tonne per day and at least one 700 bar dispenser. It says nothing about 350 bar. Berlin requires it anyway — because the trucks on the road today refuel at 350 bar.

Why this is needed

Germany's hydrogen network has shrunk considerably over the past two years. From more than ninety public stations at the peak, around fifty were left at the start of 2026; forty-two closed during 2025 alone.

The cause is well known: the passenger cars never came. New fuel cell car registrations in Germany fell from over eight hundred in 2022 to 263 in 2023 and 148 in 2024. Only the Toyota Mirai and Hyundai Nexo remain on sale.

Operator H2 Mobility, by far the largest, responded by targeting a different customer: heavy transport. Around 35 German stations are now suitable for trucks at 350 bar, and new high-capacity sites have opened, including one in Düsseldorf handling five tonnes a day. Since March 2025 more than half of all refuellings at H2 Mobility have been at 350 bar — the network is not being dismantled, it is being rebuilt.

Three pressures, no winner yet

Lay the plans side by side and three technical routes coexist.

• 350 bar gaseous: today's practice for trucks in Europe, including the Hyundai XCIENT, of which 165 now run in five European countries.
• 700 bar gaseous: more kilos on board and therefore more range, mandated by AFIR, and used by the MAN hTGX with 56 kilos of hydrogen and around 600 kilometres of range.
• Liquid hydrogen: the sLH2 route from Daimler Truck and Linde, with 85 kilos on board, over a thousand kilometres of range and a ten to fifteen minute fill. The NextGenH2 enters a small series of one hundred units from the end of 2026.

The European H2Accelerate TRUCKS project, putting 125 hydrogen trucks on the road in six countries, does not pick one route but splits by duty cycle: 700 bar for 41 to 44 tonne articulated long-haul, 350 bar for rigid regional distribution.

Three persistent misconceptions

A few assumptions circulate around these pressures that muddy the debate. They are worth correcting.

First: that a 700 bar station automatically serves 350 bar trucks too. It does not. Nozzles and receptacles are mechanically keyed per pressure class, and that is not a design flaw but the very safety measure preventing a tank from being over-pressurised. A 700 bar nozzle does not fit a 350 bar truck. A station serving both needs two dispensing points. That is precisely why the dual requirement appears in the German funding conditions.

Second: that the 700 bar heavy-duty standard is as good as finished. Reality is more nuanced. The American SAE J2601/5 exists and defines the flow classes, but formally still has the status of a technical information report. The connector standard ISO 17268-2, for flow rates above 120 grams per second, closed its ballot in June 2026. The accompanying protocol ISO 19885-3 only entered international balloting on 17 August 2026, running twelve weeks. Publication therefore realistically falls in 2027 or later. Standardisation is progressing — but it is not done.

Third: that terms like mid-flow and high-flow are marketing. They are in fact quite specific. Normal flow is 60 grams per second, mid-flow 90, high-flow at 350 bar 120 and high-flow at 700 bar 300 grams per second. Translated into fill time for a truck: roughly 28 minutes at normal flow, 19 minutes at mid-flow and about 9 minutes with two mid-flow nozzles at once. That twin coupling is a deliberate bridge while the 300 gram hardware is not yet standardised; in Europe HRS, Toyota Motor Europe and ENGIE are building it together.

What it means for the Netherlands

Dutch hauliers drive daily along exactly the corridors where these forty stations are meant to appear. What Germany awards this autumn will help determine where a Dutch hydrogen truck can refuel three years from now.

Things are moving here too. The MAN hTGX is now running at Dutch companies including GL De Haan and Van der Vlist and at DHL Netherlands, and within H2Accelerate TRUCKS, TEAL Mobility is building stations this year in Rotterdam and Antwerp among others. In the background the major manufacturers are pooling their fuel cell expertise: at the end of July 2026 Toyota signed the binding agreement to join cellcentric as an equal third shareholder alongside Daimler Truck and Volvo Group.

How we see it

A funding round that is twice oversubscribed is a more honest gauge than any roadmap. There is demand, there are plans, and there are hauliers ready to step in as soon as they know where they can refuel.

That three pressures still coexist is not chaos but the normal course of a market still choosing its standard; petrol and diesel took decades too. What matters more is that the building blocks are now on the table: money, binding European requirements, and standards genuinely taking shape this year. Alongside battery-electric driving, hydrogen is becoming an increasingly concrete route for heavy long-distance transport.

Sources

• NOW GmbH – press release on the hydrogen refuelling station funding call, 2 July 2026
• Bundesministerium für Verkehr – press release 005/2026, 29 January 2026
• Projektträger Jülich – Aufruf zur Antragseinreichung, NIP, 28 January 2026
• electrive – Bund meldet über 500 Anträge für Wasserstoff-Förderung, 2 July 2026
• Regulation (EU) 2023/1804 (AFIR), Article 6
• Clean Energy Wire and electrive – number of German hydrogen stations, January 2026
• H2 MOBILITY – network consolidation and 350 bar share, 2025
• SAE J2601/5; ISO 17268-2; ISO 19885-3; ISO 13984:2026
• Interreg Baltic HyTruck – flow classes and fill times
• H2Accelerate TRUCKS – project announcement, January 2026
• Daimler Truck – Mercedes-Benz NextGenH2, 26 January 2026
• MAN Truck & Bus – hTGX; Hyundai – XCIENT Fuel Cell in Europe, February 2026
• Volvo Group, Daimler Truck and Toyota – binding agreement on cellcentric, 27 July 2026