Hydrogen Trucks Move From Promise to Purchase Orders

OEM fuel cell selections and first commercial deliveries signal Europe’s hydrogen vehicle market is crossing into deployment.

22 May 2026

Something shifted in Europe’s hydrogen vehicle market this spring. Independent procurement decisions, converging supplier choices, and first commercial deliveries arrived in close succession, moving the sector from demonstration territory into something that looks, increasingly, like a real market.

In May 2026, Wrightbus and Solaris each selected Ballard’s FCmove-SC engine for their next-generation hydrogen buses, with announcements 24 hours apart. Solaris held roughly half of Europe’s hydrogen bus market in 2025 and extended its Ballard supply deal through 2029. Wrightbus is targeting 2027 series production. Neither company made this call lightly.

Trucks tell a similar story. Daimler is advancing from trials to small-series manufacturing of its Mercedes-Benz GenH2. Five fleet partners including DHL and Rhenus completed customer trials logging 225,000 kilometres. Daimler now plans to build 100 liquid hydrogen tractor units at its Wörth plant, with deliveries beginning in late 2026. Range exceeds 1,000 km on a full tank, directly addressing long-haul freight without battery weight penalties.

Public transit is keeping pace. MCV delivered 35 hydrogen buses to Austria’s ÖBB Postbus in May 2026, coinciding with the inauguration of a dedicated refuelling station. More than 300 hydrogen buses are now deployed or on order across Europe, with municipal mandates accelerating uptake in Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia.

Europe now counts approximately 250 public hydrogen stations operational or under construction, clustered around Germany, the Netherlands, and France. Operators placing irreversible orders are making a different kind of bet than those running time-limited trials, and the list of the former is growing.