Ministry of Transport Promotes Climate-Friendly Heavy Goods Transport

At the end of January, the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMV) launched a funding call for the development of an initial network of hydrogen refueling stations for heavy-duty commercial vehicles in Germany. For this measure, the BMV is providing a total of €220 million, which will support the construction of up to 40 refueling stations and put up to 400 hydrogen-powered trucks on the road.

Central to the scheme is a combined funding approach that links the construction of publicly accessible hydrogen refueling stations with the procurement of hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles. This is intended to ensure that new refueling stations are sufficiently utilized from the outset and that logistics companies gain planning certainty through suitable refueling options. The refueling stations must comply with European deployment targets in order to be eligible for support of up to 50% of the eligible costs. For new hydrogen-based commercial vehicles in classes N2 and N3, grants of up to 80% of the eligible additional costs compared with a conventional diesel vehicle are planned.

The aim of the funding is to strengthen both infrastructure expansion and hydrogen demand across the entire refueling network. Existing hydrogen refueling stations are also expected to benefit.

Hydrogen plays an important technical, economic, and geopolitical role in climate-friendly heavy-duty transport and usefully complements battery-electric drivetrains. This has now been put into practice, said Federal Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder. Hydrogen refueling stations and hydrogen trucks are being funded together, thereby addressing the chicken-and-egg problem: truck drivers will have reliable refueling options, and refueling stations will be utilized from the very beginning. Step by step, a reliable core network will emerge—an important building block for the transition to climate-friendly drivetrains in heavy-duty transport, Schnieder emphasized.