A total of 83 hydrogen filling stations went into operation worldwide in 2019, 36 of them in Europe, 38 in Asia, 8 in North America and one in the Arabic peninsula. In Germany 22 filling stations were added.

At the end of 2019, 432 H2 filling stations were in operation worldwide, 330 of which were publicly accessible stations. This means that the number of public filling stations for fuel cell vehicles has more than quadrupled in the last five years. Currently, 226 filling stations are planned at specific locations.

In Europe, there were a total of 177 H2 filling stations at the end of last year, 87 of which were in Germany. With 26 filling stations, France is in second place in Europe, and with 34 planned filling stations, dynamic expansion is expected to continue. The focus there, however, would be on refuelling buses and fleets of delivery vehicles and less on publicly accessible car filling stations as in the rest of Europe. A significant increase in refuelling facilities is also expected in the Netherlands, where 21 new filling stations are currently in concrete planning. Switzerland has 4 filling stations in operation and 6 more firmly planned.











In Asia, 178 hydrogen filling stations are in operation, 114 in Japan and 33 in Korea. The 27 Chinese filling stations are used almost exclusively to refuel buses or trucks of corresponding fleet operators. The most ambitious growth in the short term is in Korea, where information is available on 40 planned filling stations for cars and buses.

For comparison: With regard to the worldwide distribution, according to the knowledge of Ludwig-Bölkow-Systemtechnik there were 152 hydrogen dispensing stations in Europe, 136 in Asia and 78 in North America by the end of 2018. Of these 369 filling stations, however, only 273 were public, the other locations were reserved for closed user groups. In 2018 48 hydrogen filling stations went into operation worldwide, 17 of them in Germany. The largest number of public H2 filling stations at that time was in Japan (96), followed by Germany (60) and the USA (42).

This is the result of the now twelfth annual evaluation of H2stations.org, a website of Ludwig-Bölkow-Systemtechnik. The underlying database has been continuously updated since 2005 and contains detailed information about the worldwide petrol stations.

With reporting by Daniel Bönninghausen, Germany.

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