Hydrogen Garbage Truck Flop - German City Rebuilds It as Diesel

HEIDELBERG - It was supposed to lead the way to greener rubbish collection. Instead, the German university city of Heidelberg's hydrogen-powered garbage truck became a costly failure that spent more time in the workshop than on the streets.

Now the politicians are giving up. The truck will be rebuilt to run on diesel - and taxpayers are paying again.

The city bought the truck in 2022 for just under 1.2 million euros. More than 744,000 euros of that came from the German federal government through a national hydrogen subsidy programme.

The problems started almost immediately. In 2025 the truck was out collecting rubbish on only 41 days. The rest of the year it sat in the workshop or the garage.

This year has been even worse. Up to early August, the truck could not be used on nearly 85 percent of days. In the meantime the city had to pull an old diesel truck out of reserve to keep up with collections.

"Never" reliable

After a technical review, the city administration has given up hope. The vehicle will "never be able to be brought into lasting, reliable working order", officials wrote in the decision paper.

The fix is to move the refuse compactor onto a new diesel chassis. The conversion costs 240,000 euros and is expected to take about a year. The old hydrogen chassis will be kept only for spare parts.

The city's finance committee approved the rebuild unanimously at the end of September. Officials say it is still cheaper than buying a new truck. The decision was first reported this weekend by the German tabloid Bild.

Same story across Germany

Heidelberg is not alone. According to the decision paper, other municipalities running hydrogen garbage trucks have reported similar problems and equally long breakdowns.

According to Bild, the German state has spent around 140 million euros on electric and hydrogen garbage trucks since 2020 - 96 million of it on 165 hydrogen vehicles.

More than one in four of the trucks examined have had long periods out of service. The figures come from the federal government's answer to a question from the opposition party AfD.

In Leipzig, 16 hydrogen garbage trucks cost almost 18 million euros in total. This summer they were usable less than half the time, Bild reports.

Sweden is betting on hydrogen too

Swedish taxpayers are also funding hydrogen for heavy transport. This summer a company received 190 million kronor - around 17 million euros - in subsidies, partly from the government's flagship climate grant scheme, to build hydrogen filling stations for trucks.

At the time, only four hydrogen trucks were on the road in the whole of Sweden.