If the '14th Five-Year Plan' period confirmed the technological viability of hydrogen energy, then the '15th Five-Year Plan' period must tackle its economic viability—whether hydrogen energy can be deployed at scale and sustainably in real-world settings.

As the inaugural year of the '15th Five-Year Plan', 2026 marks a pivotal moment for China's domestic hydrogen fuel cell vehicle sector. After roughly four years, the fuel cell vehicle demonstration program has successfully wrapped up. Recently, relevant authorities have endorsed five city clusters to initiate a new round of comprehensive hydrogen energy application pilots. These include two clusters centered on fuel cell vehicles as the primary use case—the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Greater Bay Area—and three clusters focused on industrial applications: Northeast China-Yangtze River Delta, Xinjiang-Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, and the Yellow River 'Jizi' Bend-Central Plains. This signifies a fresh chapter in China's large-scale hydrogen energy industry, with renewed competition in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles now underway.

'Through several years of demonstration operations, significant progress has been made in core materials and components of fuel cells, along with notable advancements in the integration of fuel cell engines. Diversified hydrogen production methods have driven down system costs substantially. Organized national efforts to promote new energy and fuel cell vehicle development remain a key strategy,' stated Wan Gang, Honorary President of the China Association for Science and Technology, at the recently held 10th International Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Vehicle Conference and Exhibition. He emphasized that the next step should involve promoting the integrated development of hydrogen energy and renewable energy, while also supporting the purification, extraction, and utilization of industrial by-product hydrogen based on local conditions. Efforts should accelerate hydrogen energy pilots and comprehensive applications in the energy sector, with a focus on multi-field applications of hydrogen energy in transportation, chemicals, oil refining, metallurgy, energy storage, and power generation to achieve large-scale and sustainable hydrogen energy industry development.

Four-Year Demonstration Successfully Completed

In September 2020, the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, National Development and Reform Commission, and National Energy Administration issued the 'Notice on Conducting Demonstration Applications of Fuel Cell Vehicles', proposing a 'rewards-in-lieu-of-subsidies' approach to incentivize city clusters over four years based on their target achievements. Reward funds, managed by local governments and enterprises, would support the industrialization of core fuel cell vehicle technologies, talent recruitment, team building, and demonstration applications of new models and technologies—excluding investments in fuel cell vehicle manufacturing and hydrogen refueling infrastructure.

In September 2021, the five departments jointly issued the 'Notice on Initiating Demonstration Applications of Fuel Cell Vehicles', approving Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong to launch hydrogen fuel cell vehicle demonstration projects. In December of the same year, the 'Notice on Initiating a New Batch of Fuel Cell Vehicle Demonstration Applications' was released, urging Hebei and Henan provinces to strengthen organization and implementation of fuel cell vehicle demonstrations.

Over the past four years, supported by demonstration policies, China has allocated approximately 7.68 billion yuan in reward funds to demonstration city clusters. These clusters have deployed over 25,000 fuel cell vehicles, accumulated over 1.1 billion kilometers in hydrogen-powered travel, built more than 250 hydrogen refueling stations, and dispensed over 60,000 tons of hydrogen, effectively driving rapid development of China's hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicle industries. Through four years of demonstration applications, China's fuel cell vehicle annual sales surpassed 10,000 units, leading the global commercial vehicle market. The country ranks first globally in hydrogen refueling station construction, achieved breakthroughs in independent core component development, established a basic upstream-downstream industrial chain, and realized a 'from 0 to 1' breakthrough, laying a solid foundation for large-scale industrial development in the next phase.

According to Wan Gang, China now ranks among the global top tier in hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicle production and sales, hydrogen refueling station numbers, and patent deployments. By the end of 2025, domestic fuel cell vehicle sales reached 39,000 units, with over 590 hydrogen refueling stations built. Fuel cell system costs dropped from 8,000-10,000 yuan/kW in early years to around 3,000 yuan/kW, while key component power density metrics improved severalfold. Autonomous control capabilities in areas like stacks and membrane electrodes strengthened, and import substitution of core materials accelerated.

The 'Big Data Analysis Report on Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Operations' released by the China Automotive Technology and Research Center (CATARC) shows that China's fuel cell vehicles have formed mature business models in scenarios like long-haul transportation, intercity heavy-duty transport, and cold chain logistics. These advantageous scenarios are expected to drive market growth for fuel cell vehicles during the '15th Five-Year Plan' period.

New Round of Pilots: Differentiated and Collaborative Development

As Wan Gang noted, organized national promotion of new energy and fuel cell vehicles remains vital. On August 15, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Finance, and National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued Document [2026] No. 266, approving five city clusters—Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Greater Bay Area, Northeast (including Inner Mongolia)-Yangtze River Delta, Xinjiang-Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, and Yellow River 'Jizi' Bend-Central Plains—to conduct four-year hydrogen energy comprehensive application pilots. The goal is to achieve large-scale hydrogen energy applications across diverse fields by 2030, reduce terminal hydrogen prices to below 25 yuan/kg (with efforts to lower it to around 15 yuan/kg in advantageous regions), and double the national fuel cell vehicle fleet from 2025 levels to reach 100,000 units.

CATARC noted that after formality reviews, expert evaluations, and on-site defenses, the three departments formally approved the five city clusters to launch pilots. This represents a strategic national layout at the start of the '15th Five-Year Plan' to drive industrial transformation and cultivate new growth points, propelling hydrogen energy beyond vehicle applications into industrial energy-saving and carbon-reduction core areas. It aims to reshape industrial landscapes under the framework of a unified national market, truly achieving a leap from 'demonstration-first' to 'large-scale application'.

Commentary highlights that the first batch of fuel cell vehicle demonstration city clusters focused on traffic scenarios like vehicle promotion, hydrogen refueling station construction, and key component technology validation. This new pilot integrates cross-regional 'major corridor' construction with 'four lists' mandatory assessments, pushing the hydrogen energy industry from single-point traffic demonstrations to a national-level, large-scale, commercialized phase linking industrial, energy, and traffic sectors.

The five approved city clusters exhibit stronger 'cross-regional collaboration' and 'full industrial chain closure' features, each undertaking differentiated development tasks. For example, Northeast China-Yangtze River Delta, Xinjiang-Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, and Yellow River 'Jizi' Bend-Central Plains focus on industrial applications, while Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and the Greater Bay Area prioritize fuel cell vehicles. Leveraging their '14th Five-Year Plan' demonstration advantages, these clusters will further collaborate with surrounding provinces to advance hydrogen energy corridor demonstration lines and highways, driving technological equipment upgrades.

CATARC believes the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster should solidify its fuel cell industrial chain foundation. By integrating '14th Five-Year Plan' demonstration regions, it will strengthen coordination among Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Shandong, building a '6 main corridors + 11 branch lines' hydrogen highway network centered on Beijing and radiating surrounding areas, focusing on breaking through technical bottlenecks in fuel cell key component efficiency, cost, and lifespan. The Greater Bay Area cluster will concentrate on heavy-duty logistics and advanced manufacturing, establishing cross-regional hydrogen energy corridors like Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao, Guangzhou-Zhanjiang, Wuhan-Shiyan, and Guangzhou-Xiamen to promote large-scale applications in heavy-duty logistics, cold chain transport, and urban buses while driving technological upgrades. It will also implement region-specific projects like offshore wind-powered green ammonia/methanol production and million-ton hydrogen metallurgy.

The five city clusters achieve complementary advantages and industrial synergy, with the west and northeast providing resources and scenarios, and the east contributing technology and markets. By forming cross-regional teams between resource and consumption areas, they address mismatches between green hydrogen resources and industrial consumption markets, avoid redundant low-level construction, and enable holistic national hydrogen energy chain collaboration.

Urgent Need to Break Through Hydrogen Energy Commercialization

As CATARC noted, if the '14th Five-Year Plan' validated technological feasibility, the '15th Five-Year Plan' must address economic feasibility—whether hydrogen energy can be used on a large scale and sustainably in real-world scenarios. Currently, the hydrogen energy industry faces bottlenecks like insufficient green hydrogen supply, high costs, and storage/transportation challenges, with immature business models and unreleased market demand.

Analysis indicates that the entire hydrogen fuel cell vehicle supply chain remains costly. On the vehicle side, the fuel cell system accounts for a significant portion, particularly platinum—a scarce precious metal catalyst for hydrogen-oxygen electrochemical reactions that directly impacts fuel cell system power performance and lifespan. Platinum's concentrated reserves and price volatility with international commodities make raw material costs difficult to reduce solely through scaled production.

Meanwhile, full-chain green hydrogen costs remain significantly higher than gray hydrogen. An official from the China Electricity Council noted that hydrogen production from curtailed wind/solar power for peak shaving is currently uneconomical due to high electrolysis costs. Only by relying on large-scale renewable energy bases and downstream green ammonia/methanol for industrial feedstock substitution can overall investments be diluted. Additionally, incomplete carbon footprint accounting and green value trading systems for domestic green hydrogen and ammonia limit green premium realization channels, prolonging enterprise investment return cycles and hindering further cost reductions.

Yu Zhuoping, Director of the China Hydrogen Energy Alliance Expert Committee, told media that hydrogen cost reduction logic resembles that of power batteries, requiring scaled production to drive technological iteration. Scaling depends on unlocking application scenarios rather than relying solely on subsidies. A market-driven profit model should be established through carbon assessment mechanisms to form replicable business models before national expansion, without pursuing simultaneous nationwide maturity.

Based on this, the new pilot work emphasizes in the 'four lists' the need to strengthen hydrogen energy equipment development, promote industrial hydrogen energy projects, and advance fuel cell vehicle promotion and hydrogen refueling station construction.

The hydrogen energy equipment development list prioritizes breakthroughs in 'bottleneck' areas like high-power electrolyzers, high-pressure/liquid hydrogen storage/transport equipment, and key materials/core components to further reduce costs of domestic hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and related equipment. The industrial hydrogen energy project list accelerates green hydrogen substitution in heavy industries like steel, chemicals, and refining. Green hydrogen replacing gray hydrogen is expected to become the largest source of hydrogen demand growth, marking a key distinction from previous fuel cell vehicle demonstrations. The fuel cell vehicle promotion list expands large-scale demonstrations of heavy trucks, logistics vehicles, and construction machinery in specific scenarios, focusing on medium/heavy-duty, long-distance, high-frequency operations to transition domestic fuel cell vehicles from 'small-scale demonstrations' to 'large-scale operations' while validating reliability, economics, and business models through real-world data. The hydrogen refueling station construction list promotes location-specific integrated hydrogen production/refueling stations, highway hydrogen energy corridors, and pipeline hydrogen supply infrastructure networks, including deploying hydrogen refueling stations at highway service areas, port terminals, and logistics parks, exploring models like on-site electrolysis, co-located oil-hydrogen stations, and hydrogen mother stations, while accelerating medium-to-long-term infrastructure like hydrogen pipelines and hydrogen-blended natural gas pipelines to support cross-regional hydrogen energy circulation.

Accelerating Hydrogen Energy Corridor Construction

Wan Gang underscored the imperative of further developing cross-regional hydrogen energy corridors, with a particular focus on typical commercial vehicle applications, such as long-haul logistics, intercity passenger transportation, and cold chain logistics. He highlighted the necessity for industry players and government departments to work in tandem to facilitate large-scale, cross-regional deployment of hydrogen-powered commercial vehicle fleets. Adhering to the principle of "utilizing hydrogen wherever feasible," efforts should be made to continuously explore the establishment of fuel cell and by-product hydrogen industrial zones within city cluster industrial areas, foster a hydrogen energy and fuel cell application ecosystem, and expedite the development of new energy vehicles within the commercial vehicle sector.

Simultaneously, Wan Gang emphasized the need for the industry to refine the win-win mechanism for hydrogen energy corridors and cultivate a favorable industrial environment. This entails clarifying regulations for hydrogen highways, supporting on-site hydrogen production and storage from distributed renewable energy sources, refining technical standards across the entire hydrogen supply chain—from production and storage to transportation and utilization—accelerating the development of safety standards and inspection protocols for fuel cell vehicles and onboard hydrogen systems, and exploring policy incentives for demonstration enterprises. These incentives could include R&D tax deductions for high-tech enterprises and toll fee reductions for operational vehicles, aiming to invigorate enterprises through policy levers.

Fang Haifeng, Chief Expert at CATARC and Deputy Director of the China Automotive Strategy and Policy Research Center, proposed in media interviews that scaling hydrogen highways from "demonstration lines" to "large-scale networks" necessitates breakthroughs across four key pathways: network integration (expanding from single lines to cross-regional hydrogen highway networks to enhance overall operational efficiency and attractiveness for investment), policy coordination (establishing a comprehensive policy support system for hydrogen production, storage, transportation, and utilization to provide a stable and predictable institutional framework for large-scale development), scenario diversification (extending applications from single heavy-duty transport to multi-scenario, multi-vehicle types to drive infrastructure investment through scaled demand), and market-driven operations (leveraging business model innovation and incentive mechanisms to transition hydrogen energy from a "policy-driven" to a "market-driven" paradigm).

As Wan Gang aptly stated, "Developing hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicles represents a crucial pathway for energy and transportation's low-carbon transition, emerging as a pivotal global strategic choice to combat climate change and foster green economic growth." There is ample reason to believe that, having successfully navigated the critical transition from "technological feasibility" to "commercial viability," China's hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry is poised for a brighter future.

Note: This article was initially published in the "Hot Topics" column of the October 2026 issue of Auto Review magazine. Stay tuned for more insights.

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