Daimler-Volvo fuel cell is ready. Europe's hydrogen pumps aren't

Cellcentric has a 375-kilowatt fuel cell that fits in the engine bay of a 13-liter diesel truck. It just doesn't have anywhere sensible to fuel one at scale yet, and the Daimler Truck–Volvo Group joint venture says it won't build its mass-production plant until Europe fixes that.

CTO Nicholas Loughlan laid out the condition plainly at a Sept. 17 media visit to cellcentric's headquarters in Kirchheim/Teck, near Stuttgart: truck-sized hydrogen stations and fuel near €6 per kilogram (about $6.70), so end customers can run fuel cell trucks cost-effectively. Until then, the timing of hydrogen trucking at scale rests with fuel suppliers, station builders and governments. Convenient, one might note, for everyone involved.

"You cannot just put a product out there and expect it to scale," Loughlan said. "You need a whole ecosystem and infrastructure and a whole framework for it to work."

What does the new fuel cell actually deliver?

The BZA375, unveiled in April 2026, replaces the twin-unit setup of its predecessor. The current BZA150 powers a 40-metric-ton truck with two 150-kW units; cellcentric stopped it short of full series production and fast-tracked the new system instead.

The single BZA375 delivers up to 375 kW of continuous net power — more than 500 horsepower — from a unit weighing under 500 kilograms, about 1,100 pounds. It's rated at less than 6 kilograms of hydrogen per 100 kilometers in a fully loaded 40-ton truck, or more than 10.2 miles per kilogram, with a service life of about 25,000 hours.

"We do our homework, too," Loughlan said. "That's why BZA375 uses 20% less fuel than the BZA150 twin system." The unit also fits North American tractors such as the Volvo VNL and Freightliner Cascadia, alongside Europe's Mercedes-Benz Actros and Volvo FH.

Esslingen builds, Weilheim waits

The Esslingen pilot plant, about 30 kilometers from headquarters, has handled every production step under one roof since June 2024. It's building BZA150s for customer fleets that reach operators from the end of this year, then moves to increased sample production of the BZA375. Series production is planned for the turn of the decade.

Weilheim an der Teck is the second step, and it remains a reserved plot. cellcentric holds an option until end-2029 on 16 hectares — about 40 acres — in the Rosenloh industrial park, and paid more than €15 million ($16.8 million) to reserve the land.

"We're not investing into a huge manufacturing facility in the first place, knowing how, let's say, the transformation of new technology is sometimes difficult to manage, as we all know," Loughlan said. No order count triggers construction; the decision rests on Esslingen's output limits and demand, and a new plant takes "three to four years, as always." A new plant taking four years to build, for a product whose fuel doesn't exist at the target price. The math is sobering.

Why a second infrastructure?

Loughlan's argument starts with the grid. Electrifying Europe's entire in-use truck fleet would take roughly 500 TWh of electricity — "roughly the energy consumption that Germany has in a year," he said. Germany produced 509.2 TWh in 2025, per Destatis. ACEA counts 6.2 million trucks on EU roads, about 3.9 million of them heavy-duty above 16 tons.

His example: the Denkendorf service station on the A8 near Stuttgart, where trucks fill the lot at shift's end. It has no truck charger today, and planning calls for a 15.4-megawatt grid connection by 2035 — enough for about 15 trucks to megawatt-charge simultaneously. Energy providers are already telling industrial customers they can't upgrade connections fast enough, he said. Two parallel infrastructures for heavy-duty, he argues, are "a lot more practical, a lot cheaper, and a lot more effective" — with electrification wherever possible.

The station and price gaps

EU rules set a floor: the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation requires stations of at least 1 metric ton per day with 700-bar dispensers every 200 kilometers on the core TEN-T network, plus one per urban node, by Dec. 31, 2030. cellcentric's slides call for designs scalable to 4 tons a day.

Reality check: Europe has 187 hydrogen stations, Daimler Truck CEO Karin Rådström said at IAA — and most dispense at 350 bar, meaning they're mainly passenger-car stations unfit for trucks needing more than 10 kg at 700 bar or liquid hydrogen.

"If we can get six euros per kilogram for hydrogen price, we're okay to start scaling," Loughlan said. Current European price? "Substantially higher." In January, H2 Mobility sold hydrogen to hylane customers at about €8 per kilogram net at selected German stations — a price both companies called well below market.

Germany's latest funding call offered €220 million ($247 million), tying station money to truck deployments. "So we solve the chicken and egg equation," Loughlan said. Applicants requested more than 70 high-capacity stations and 800 heavy-duty trucks.

Meanwhile, EU CO2 rules demand 45% cuts per kilometer for new heavy-duty vehicles by 2030 and 65% by 2035. "It's an OEM legislation that's not an end customer legislation," Loughlan said. "The customer will choose the best technology for this job and what's the best TCO."

Slipped timelines, waiting volumes

The schedule has slipped before. Volvo paid €600 million for half the venture in 2020, when series production was planned for the second half of this decade and first systems were due from Weilheim in 2026. Operations there are now expected "around 2030."

Cost depends on volume: "If you don't produce tens of thousands every year, then, of course, your cost position is not where it can be," Loughlan said, with government support needed early. Toyota, which signed in July to become an equal one-third owner with closing expected around year-end or early 2027, brings passenger-car industrialization experience from the Mirai.

North America is on hold: "There's currently, our assessment at least, not a huge demand for zero-emission trucking in the U.S. right now. So we've taken a bit of a more observing position," Loughlan said.

Stations, fuel price and cellcentric's volume must grow together before fleets commit. "And then the end customers will go, 'I'm not only buying one for show purposes, I'm going to buy 10,'" he said. For now, fleets eyeing hydrogen long-haul should watch station permits and the €6-per-kilo line — those, not the fuel cell, set the clock.