Alongside the truck manufacturers, the group includes Bosch, Air Liquide, TotalEnergies, TEAL Mobility, and MB Energy. The group said that Germany has put in place all of the conditions needed for scalable deployment of hydrogen truck fleets by 2030.
The industry group believes that hydrogen is an important complement to battery-electric vehicles in achieving the EU’s decarbonization targets, industry leaders are joining forces to overcome historical bottlenecks, particularly for truck operations requiring long range, high payload capacity, rapid refueling and operational flexibility.
At Daimler Truck, customers have driven almost 600,000 kilometers with fuel cell trucks. As the next step, the company plans to deploy a small series of 100 next generation fuel cell trucks into customer operations from the end of 2026 onwards. In parallel, the first hydrogen combustion engine trucks are being prepared for market launch next year. Overall, the company invests a mid-three-digit million euro amount in hydrogen trucks by the end of the decade.
Volvo Group is similarly advancing its hydrogen portfolio and investing significant amounts into hydrogen power solutions such as both fuel-cell and hydrogen-combustion trucks for market rollout towards 2030.
Toyota will participate as a technology partner supporting the expansion of hydrogen mobility, leveraging more than 30 years of expertise gained through the development and supply of fuel cell systems, while Bosch is supplying key vehicle components for gaseous hydrogen – with its fuel cell system proven over more than 30 million kilometers on the road – alongside break-through refuelling technologies for both liquid and gaseous hydrogen.
On the energy and infrastructure side, Volvo Group and Daimler Truck are closely cooperating with energy companies and hydrogen suppliers like Air Liquide, TotalEnergies and MB Energy, and retail operators such as MB Energy and TEAL Mobility (a 50/50 joint venture between TotalEnergies and Air Liquide, operating under TotalEnergies brand). These players are mobilizing their respective capacities to scale both liquid and gaseous hydrogen supply chains. Through their infrastructure investments, they are advancing toward large capacity, high-throughput refuelling stations, able to refuel up to 100 trucks per day.
They are also leveraging synergies with the fast-growing industrial renewable hydrogen production, driven by the implementation of the European RED III directive. Reaching competitive cost with diesel is essential, the group believes, for fleet operators to adopt hydrogen.