H2 Mobility to shut down 22 hydrogen fuel stations in Germany
At the end of March, the existing hydrogen refuelling stations in the German cities of Neuruppin, Bonn, Flensburg, Geisingen, Potsdam, Ulm, Siegen, Aachen, Bad Rappenau, Heidelberg (Speyerer Straße) and Mönchengladbach are to be closed. The company does not specify in the press release which locations will be affected in the next round by the end of the second quarter. On the H2 Mobility map, only the locations that are to go offline at the end of the first quarter are marked with information.
What is clear, however, is that the closure of these 22 petrol stations will complete the consolidation that began in 2022. H2 Mobility had already permanently closed some locations at the beginning of 2024, such as the only hydrogen refuelling station in Rhineland-Palatinate at the time. Six more locations were closed at the end of 2024.
The reasoning is the same in all cases: “Older, small refuelling stations with a focus on passenger cars, some of which were built more than 10 years ago and no longer meet today’s technical and economic requirements, must be removed from the network where this is unavoidable,” explained Martin Jüngel, Managing Director & CFO of H2 Mobility. “H2 MOBILITY is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. The hydrogen mobility market in Germany has changed significantly during this period. For some years now, our strategic focus has been on a regional, demand-based expansion of the hydrogen infrastructure for light and heavy commercial vehicles.”
Refuelling commercial vehicles requires technical and structural prerequisites, such as higher filling station roofs, larger aprons for the towing curves of trucks and the ability to store and refuel significantly larger quantities of hydrogen. “These requirements cannot be realised at many older locations originally designed only for passenger cars,” H2 Mobility writes. If a filling station cannot be retrofitted, it no longer fits into the programme – and is difficult to operate profitably anyway with the low penetration of hydrogen cars in Germany.
In order to ensure the continued operation of a network for fuel cell cars, H2 Mobility is “in ongoing talks with various market participants,” according to the press release. There is therefore a chance that things will continue at one or other location after all – but nothing has been finalised yet, as the filling stations will be taken off the grid for the time being on the dates mentioned.
H2 Mobility sees its future in larger locations with 350-, 500- and 700-bar refuelling options, such as those already being implemented in Düsseldorf (North Rhine-Westphalia) and Ludwigshafen (Rhineland-Palatinate) – H2 cars can also refuel at the 700-bar points. Some commercial vehicles also use 700 bar, but this is no longer the focus of H2 Mobility. “The proportion of 350-bar refuelling for buses and commercial vehicles is rising continuously. By the end of the year, we expect the majority of our sales to be generated by 350-bar demand,” says Jüngel.
Eleven more stations are to follow by the end of June. In future, H2 Mobility intends to concentrate primarily on supplying commercial vehicles, which have different refuelling requirements. According to H2 Mobility, it is in talks with several market players in order to obtain some of the car refuelling stations.
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