From Subsidies to Scrap: The Real Story of Hydrogen Vehicle Fleets

Scale matters. According to ACEA’s Vehicles in Use Europe 2023 report, there are over 714,000 buses in the European Union. The number of hydrogen buses globally is in the low thousands. CALSTART reported 575 full size fuel cell transit buses in the United States as of mid 2024. Even if Europe has 1,000 to 1,500 hydrogen buses, they represent well under 1% of the total bus fleet. In North America, there are over 10 million single unit trucks and more than 3 million combination trucks in the United States alone, based on Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration data. Hydrogen heavy vehicles are statistical noise in comparison. The opportunity to build a large industry around repowering stranded hydrogen fleets is constrained by the small absolute numbers. Where it occurs it will be a local small scale entrepreneur taking advantage of the opportunity to buy a bunch of vehicles for next to nothing with the hope of making a one off profit off of the retrofits, or as in the case of ex-Nikola executives, score more subsidy largess.