Mercedes hydrogen truck moves from testing to a 100 truck production run

A Mercedes hydrogen truck moves toward real customer use

A Mercedes hydrogen truck is moving out of testing and into a real production run. Daimler Truck, the German company that owns the Mercedes Benz truck brand, plans to build around 100 examples of its second generation hydrogen truck, called the NextGenH2, at its plant in Worth, Germany. The truck stores liquid hydrogen, a fuel kept extremely cold so it takes up less space than hydrogen gas, and turns it into electricity using a fuel cell instead of burning it. Daimler Truck states the truck can travel more than 1,000 kilometers on a single tank and refuels in 10 to 15 minutes, using a technology called sLH2 developed with the industrial gas company Linde. That combination targets long haul routes, trips too long for a battery electric truck to finish without stopping to recharge for hours.

With the NextGenH2 Truck, we are taking the next technological step in fuel cell trucks.

Achim Puchert, chief executive of Mercedes Benz Trucks. Source 4.

Dachser becomes the first named customer

Dachser, a German logistics company, is the first named customer for the new truck. Dachser states it will receive 1 NextGenH2 truck by the end of December 2026 and 2 more by the middle of 2027, 3 trucks total, running out of its logistics center in Karlsruhe, about 30 kilometers from the Worth plant. Those 3 hydrogen trucks join a Dachser fleet that already runs more than 190 battery electric trucks, including several Mercedes eActros 600 models.

Fuel cell trucks with liquid hydrogen could supplement Dachser's e-truck fleet in the future — especially when very long ranges or short refueling times are called for.

Stefan Hohm, chief development officer at Dachser. Source 5.

Government money and industry demand back the bet

The production run carries 226 million euros in German federal and state government funding, covering development, production and deployment, Electrive reports. That funding comes from the Federal Ministry of Transport and the states of Rhineland Palatinate and Baden Wurttemberg. Daimler Truck also states separately that it plans to spend a further sum in the hundreds of millions of euros on hydrogen trucks overall by the end of the decade, a private company figure with a broader scope and a longer time horizon than the government grant, and the 2 figures should not be added together as though they describe the same spending.

A joint release from Daimler Truck, Volvo Group, Toyota Motor Corporation and 5 other supply and energy companies, published the day before the small series was shown at the IAA Transportation show, states that a separate German government funding round for hydrogen truck refueling stations drew applications covering more than 70 high capacity stations and 800 heavy duty trucks from industrial companies. That application count is roughly 8 times the 100 trucks Daimler Truck itself plans to build in this series, a MAOWCE comparison of the 2 sourced figures, evidence that appetite for hydrogen trucking in Germany reaches well past 1 manufacturer.

Full scale production is still years away

Full scale series production of the NextGenH2, beyond this initial small series, is not expected before the early 2030s, Electrive reports, a timeline no other source read for this article confirms. Until then, the roughly 100 trucks built at Worth are meant to prove the technology works in real freight operations, not to replace the battery electric trucks Daimler Truck already sells. Customers running the earlier generation hydrogen trucks from Daimler Truck have already driven nearly 600,000 kilometers in trials, Daimler Truck and the joint industry release both state, distance the company points to as evidence the technology holds up outside a test track.