Vehicles get the headlines. Stations create the market.
By the end of 2024, roughly 1,160 hydrogen refueling stations were operating worldwide. About 125 new stations opened that year, and H2stations.org identified concrete plans for at least 377 additional refueling locations outside China. Forty-five countries now have hydrogen fueling infrastructure in operation or under construction.
The hydrogen infrastructure build-out is happening station by station, corridor by corridor, and increasingly through a mix of public investment, private capital, utility leadership, and fleet demand.
California’s retail network shows both the progress and the hard work still ahead. In February 2026, Chevron opened its third California hydrogen station in Carson, following Moreno Valley and Vacaville, bringing the state’s listed retail network to 52 open stations. The Carson location adds three H70 fueling positions in the Los Angeles metro area, a key region for fuel cell vehicle adoption and fleet operations.
The California HRS network has experienced a significant increase in station reliability, driven by public and private investments in upgraded equipment, expanded staffing, and the addition of backup equipment. As a result, average monthly station availability increased from 60% in 2024 to over 90% by the end of 2025.
At the same time, California’s network has experienced supply chain disruptions, underscoring why infrastructure scale, redundancy, and resilient hydrogen supply are just as important as station count.
FirstElement Fuel’s hydrogen station at the Port of Oakland is the nation’s first high-volume, fast-fill commercial hydrogen truck fueling station. It is designed to dispense up to 18,000 kilograms of hydrogen per day, fuel up to 200 trucks daily, and complete a large Class 8 truck fill in about 10 minutes. FirstElement has also announced plans for 15 hydrogen truck stations along California’s major trucking routes, linking individual fueling sites into connected freight corridors.
The momentum extends well beyond California.
In June 2025, Douglas County PUD opened Washington state's first public hydrogen fueling station in East Wenatchee, supplied by the nation's first renewable hydrogen production facility owned and operated by a public utility. The fuel is made with Columbia River hydropower and sells for $4 per kilogram. A rural public utility just proved that local production paired with local demand works.
The Evergreen state also operates a hydrogen fueling station in Chehalis and is adding six hydrogen-fueled buses to Lewis County Transit’s fleet.
Europe is writing corridor connectivity into law.
The European Union’s Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation requires publicly accessible hydrogen refueling stations along the core Trans-European Transport Network by the end of 2030, with a maximum distance of 200 kilometers between stations, at least one station in every urban node, a daily capacity of at least one metric ton, and at least one 700-bar dispenser.
In November 2025, the European Commission awarded more than €600 million to 70 alternative-fuel infrastructure projects, including support for 38 hydrogen refueling stations for cars, trucks, and buses.
Every station in the ground does double duty. It serves vehicles on the road today and gives fleet operators, lenders, manufacturers, and public agencies more confidence to commit to the next round of deployments. That cycle, repeated station by station and corridor by corridor, is how transportation decarbonizes and how port and freight communities get cleaner air.
“For years, the question was whether hydrogen infrastructure would get built,” said Bill Elrick, Executive Director of H2FCP. “That question has been answered. The question now is how fast we connect it. Every station that opens shortens the distance between a fleet operator's interest and a purchase order.”
-
GO DEEPER: Explore the hydrogen station data and maps and track California's hydrogen fueling network in real time at SOSS.