Toyota, Volvo and Daimler Truck join forces on European hydrogen trucks

Eight industrial players used IAA Transportation to set out a joint plan for rolling out hydrogen-powered trucks across Europe. Volvo Group, Daimler Truck, Toyota Motor Corporation, Bosch, Air Liquide, TotalEnergies, TEAL Mobility and MB Energy say Germany now has all the pieces in place for scalable deployment by 2030. The group is asking other national governments and the European Commission to help copy that model continent-wide.

Hydrogen has spent years as the freight industry’s perennial almost-ready technology. At IAA Transportation, a group of vehicle makers, suppliers, energy companies and fuel retailers announced that they are lining up trucks, refuelling infrastructure and hydrogen supply in parallel rather than waiting for each other.

Volvo Group, Daimler Truck, Toyota Motor Corporation, Bosch, Air Liquide, TotalEnergies, TEAL Mobility and MB Energy are behind the plan. Their shared argument is that hydrogen complements battery-electric vehicles rather than competing with them, particularly in long-distance haulage where operators need range, payload, quick refuelling and flexible scheduling.

Germany as the test bed

According to the companies, Germany is the first market in Europe where all the conditions for scalable deployment of hydrogen trucks by 2030 are in place, the result of work by German authorities alongside industry along the value chain. The group describes the German set-up as an operational launchpad and a practical baseline for the rest of the continent.

They point to three levers that, combined, are meant to bring hydrogen within reach of diesel economics: lowering vehicle cost through incentives and series production; bringing the pump price down via a more competitive supply chain and greenhouse gas quota mechanisms; and operating incentives such as zero-emission toll exemptions for fleets. Reaching cost parity with diesel, the companies say, is essential before operators will switch.

What the truck makers are committing

Daimler Truck says customers have now covered almost 600,000 km (around 373,000 miles) in its fuel cell trucks. The next step is a small series of 100 next-generation fuel cell trucks going into customer operations from the end of 2026, while the company’s first hydrogen combustion engine trucks are being prepared for market launch next year. Daimler Truck puts its hydrogen truck investment at a mid-three-digit million euro amount by the end of the decade.

Volvo Group is developing both fuel cell and hydrogen-combustion trucks for a market rollout towards 2030, and says it is investing significant amounts in hydrogen power solutions.

Toyota joins as a technology partner, drawing on more than 30 years of developing and supplying fuel cell systems. Bosch is contributing vehicle components for gaseous hydrogen — its fuel cell system has covered more than 30 million km (roughly 18.6 million miles) in road use, the supplier says — as well as refuelling technology for both liquid and gaseous hydrogen.

Fuel and filling stations

On the energy side, Volvo Group and Daimler Truck are working with Air Liquide, TotalEnergies and MB Energy on supply, and with MB Energy and TEAL Mobility on retail. TEAL Mobility is a 50/50 joint venture between TotalEnergies and Air Liquide operating under the TotalEnergies brand.

The aim is large, high-throughput stations capable of refuelling up to 100 trucks a day, for both liquid and gaseous hydrogen, tapping into the growing industrial renewable hydrogen production encouraged by the European RED III directive.

Signs of demand

Market is rising to meet these conditions.

The companies cite Germany’s NOW funding programme, where recent applications were oversubscribed: industrial companies applied for more than 70 high-capacity stations and 800 heavy-duty trucks. They read that as commercial pull from the logistics sector rather than policy-driven interest alone.

What it means

For fleet operators, the significance is less about any single truck than about whether hydrogen can be bought, fuelled and run at a predictable cost outside a pilot project. The group is asking for synchronised funding calls covering both stations and vehicles to meet Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) targets, harmonised renewable fuel credit mechanisms and toll incentives, and shared de-risking across the chain from production and liquefaction to distribution and vehicle operation.

No pricing or customer-order details were announced. The first of the next-generation fuel cell trucks named in the plan are due to reach customers from the end of 2026.

Source: newsroom.toyota.eu