As China enters 2026, marking the end of its 14th Five-Year Plan and the beginning of the 15th, the four-year fuel cell vehicle demonstration program has successfully concluded. This milestone signals that China's hydrogen and fuel cell vehicle industry is entering a new phase of large-scale development, gradually becoming a strategic industry leading the global energy transition. Reflecting on the achievements of the four-year demonstration, China's annual fuel cell vehicle sales have surpassed the 10,000-unit mark, the commercial vehicle market leads globally, the number of hydrogen refueling stations ranks first worldwide, key components have achieved independent breakthroughs, and the upstream and downstream industrial chain system has been largely established. CATARC, as a third-party support organization for the fuel cell vehicle demonstration application, has been deeply involved in the entire process. These significant results benefit from orderly guidance and support from top-level policies, and even more so from the innovative exploration, close cooperation, and concerted efforts of all players in the industrial chain. Over the past four years, the practical experience accumulated by various industry forces has become a powerful driving force for the sustained and high-quality development of China's hydrogen and fuel cell vehicle industry.
Optimizing Top-Level Guidance to Drive Breakthroughs from Scratch
Hydrogen energy is a crucial support for building a new energy system, achieving the "dual carbon" goals, and ensuring national energy security, and it is also an important direction for emerging industries. Fuel cell vehicles, as one of the core technology routes for China's new energy vehicles, are a leading area for large-scale hydrogen application. Since 2009, China has supported the development of fuel cell vehicles through purchase subsidies. By July 2020, China had cumulatively promoted over 7,200 fuel cell vehicles, built about 80 hydrogen refueling stations, and significantly increased social capital investment enthusiasm. However, the industry still faced prominent issues such as a lack of core technologies and key components, weak enterprise innovation capabilities, and difficulties in building hydrogen refueling facilities. There was an urgent need to optimize and adjust policy support methods, focusing on precise solutions for key bottlenecks. In 2021, the Ministry of Finance and other departments adjusted the purchase subsidy policy for fuel cell vehicles to a demonstration application support policy and launched the fuel cell vehicle demonstration application project. This supported demonstrations in five city clusters—Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhengzhou, and Hebei—covering over 40 cities. Using fuel cell vehicles as a breakthrough, the approach involved strengthening key technology research, exploring application scenarios, building a complete industrial chain, and accelerating the application of hydrogen energy "from point to area." During the demonstration, a "rewards instead of subsidies" method was adopted to precisely support core technology industrialization research, vehicle promotion and application, and hydrogen supply system construction. This fully leveraged the nurturing and leveraging role of reward funds for the development of emerging industries, guiding coordinated development and synergy across the upstream and downstream industrial chain. With policy support, China has allocated approximately 7.68 billion yuan in reward funds to the demonstration city clusters. The five city clusters have cumulatively demonstrated over 25,000 fuel cell vehicles, with a cumulative hydrogen mileage exceeding 1.1 billion kilometers. Over 250 hydrogen refueling stations have been built, with a cumulative hydrogen refueling volume exceeding 60,000 tons. This has effectively promoted the rapid development of China's hydrogen and fuel cell vehicle industry, with a self-controllable industrial chain largely formed, achieving a breakthrough from scratch and laying a solid foundation for the next stage of industrial large-scale development.
Leveraging Scenarios to Solve Challenges in Large-Scale Promotion and Application
Fuel cell vehicles offer advantages such as fast refueling, long driving range, and low emissions, especially in medium-to-heavy-duty and long-distance transportation scenarios. During the demonstration, various localities and enterprises actively explored diversified application scenarios to accelerate the promotion and application of fuel cell vehicles. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei city cluster, focusing on the transportation needs of furniture, commercial vehicles, construction materials, and coke, explored multiple cross-provincial hydrogen energy corridors with one-way distances of 200-300 kilometers. Shanghai explored application models for fuel cell passenger cars, launching commercial fuel cell ride-hailing demonstrations centered around the Shanghai Hongqiao Hub. Companies like Rockcheck, leveraging the transportation needs of the steel industry in Tianjin and Hebei, actively explored a full-load transportation model of "iron ore on the outbound trip, coke on the return trip," which has given fuel cell heavy trucks a preliminary basis for large-scale promotion. Guangdong Yuntai Hydrogen Energy, relying on extensive cold-chain transportation needs between cities like Guangzhou, Foshan, and Shenzhen, focused on demonstrating fuel cell refrigerated trucks, providing clean and efficient transport solutions for high-timeliness goods such as ice cream, medicine, and fresh produce. Regions like Shandong, Jilin, Sichuan, Liaoning, Henan, Shanxi, Hubei, and Inner Mongolia have successively introduced preferential policies for fuel cell vehicles on expressways, playing a decisive role in reducing operating costs. To further verify the feasibility of fuel cell vehicles in medium-to-heavy-duty and long-distance transportation scenarios, in 2025, CATARC, together with industry enterprises, launched the world's first "Hydrogen Car Journey of 10,000 Miles." Through 15 typical operating routes and over 13,000 kilometers of large-scale, cross-regional real-vehicle demonstration verification, it provides strong support for the industry's continuous exploration of advanced technologies and products. As of May 2026, cumulative sales of fuel cell vehicles in China have exceeded 40,000 units, quadrupling from the pre-2020 level. The annual sales volume in 2025 surpassed the 10,000-unit mark for the first time, marking the beginning of a new phase of large-scale development for China's fuel cell vehicle industry. According to the "Big Data Analysis Report on Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Operations" released by CATARC, relatively mature business models have formed for fuel cell vehicles in scenarios such as mainline transportation, intercity heavy-haul, and cold-chain logistics. These advantageous scenarios are expected to be the main drivers of market growth for fuel cell vehicles during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.
Synergizing Technology and Policy to Guide Breakthroughs in Key Technological Innovation
Before 2020, China's key technology research and development level was relatively weak, core components heavily relied on imports, the industrial chain and supply chain system were not yet complete, and product performance lagged behind international advanced levels. To promote technological innovation and industrialization in key links of the industrial chain, the demonstration policy set a series of technical indicator requirements for promoted fuel cell vehicles, such as pure hydrogen driving range and system power density. It also provided financial rewards for advanced products of key components, making the construction of a complete industrial chain an important part of the demonstration. By strengthening the synergy between technology and policy, the aim was to guide industry enterprises to enhance R&D and innovation in advanced technologies and their industrial application. Following policy guidance, enterprises like Beiqi Foton, Yutong, and Higer actively laid out the development and application of various types of fuel cell vehicles, adhering to a forward-development strategy to continuously improve vehicle product performance. Key component enterprises such as Sinohytec, Jie Hydrogen, Foresight Energy, REFIRE, Kingston, Dongyue, and Jiping also continuously strengthened core technology R&D and industrial research, with their developed products achieving batch installation and application through the demonstration. According to data from the Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Vehicle Demonstration Evaluation Platform, the installation rate of core components produced by Chinese enterprises, such as stacks, membrane electrode assemblies, bipolar plates, air compressors, and hydrogen circulation systems, has reached over 80%. The installation rates for core materials like catalysts, proton exchange membranes, and carbon paper, which have long faced "bottleneck" issues, have also reached 23%, 14%, and 6% respectively, achieving initial industrial breakthroughs. Simultaneously, the technical level of vehicles and components has rapidly improved, transitioning from "following" to "running alongside" global leaders. Compared to earlier products, China's latest fuel cell vehicle products have seen their pure hydrogen driving range increase from 200km in 2020 to over 600km. The rated power of the fuel cell system has increased from 50kW to over 300kW, the system mass power density from 300W/kg to over 900W/kg, and the stack volumetric power density from 2.5kW/L to over 6.4kW/L—all achieving double-digit growth. These products can now largely meet the demands of long-distance and heavy-haul transportation, becoming one of the important pathways for promoting low-carbon development in the transportation sector.
Enhancing Data Empowerment to Promote Sustained High-Quality Industry Development
In the early stages of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the market scale for fuel cell vehicles was small, and the industry lacked stable and reliable data resources, making it difficult to support sustained development in technology R&D, product iteration, and scenario layout. Under the guidance of relevant authorities, CATARC built the Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Vehicle Demonstration Evaluation Platform. On one hand, it provides effective support for the full-process supervision and assessment of the fuel cell vehicle demonstration. On the other hand, it uses online big data to dynamically monitor industry development, making significant contributions to the digital transformation of research models for industry and policy research. The demonstration evaluation platform is the industry's first big data platform integrating "vehicle-station-hydrogen" monitoring and management, and also the world's largest dedicated fuel cell vehicle platform. It achieved the concurrent access of tens of thousands of fuel cell vehicles for the first time and currently connects approximately 27,000 vehicles. Industry enterprises, using their own operational data, continuously strengthen key technology R&D and upgrades, optimize product development strategies, and rationally layout promotion scenarios and hydrogen supply systems, providing crucial support for the high-level execution of the demonstration work. Furthermore, the full-process data-driven supervision system established based on the platform provides significant support for the implementation of demonstration policies, the assessment of city clusters, and the calculation of reward points. It also offers valuable experience for the implementation and promotion of industrial policies in the next phase.
Expert Guidance and the Strategic Role of Industry Think Tanks
Think tank experts are the "intellectual backbone" of industrial development, which is even more important for emerging industries. They can identify bottlenecks and blockages through in-depth research and provide solutions, as well as anchor long-term development trends and guide the industry to position itself in cutting-edge areas in advance. In recent years, CATARC has actively promoted the establishment of authoritative industry think tank platforms, setting up expert committees like the CATARC Expert Committee and the CATARC Technical Expert Committee to continuously empower the industry's development. At the same time, it actively builds industry exchange platforms, hosting conferences such as the China Fuel Cell Vehicle Conference, the High-Quality Development Conference for the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Vehicle Industry, and the "Hydrogen Energy Development Forum" of the Taiyuan Energy Low-Carbon Development Forum. These events bring together domestic and international experts, scholars, industry leaders, and enterprise representatives to systematically summarize industry development achievements, deeply analyze industry opportunities and challenges, actively share valuable work experience, and prospectively judge future industry trends and offer suggestions, guiding the new direction of high-quality industry development. Wan Gang, Honorary Chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, emphasized at the China Fuel Cell Vehicle Conference that the fuel cell vehicle demonstration should be used as an opportunity to jointly promote core technology innovation in hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles, connect "hydrogen expressways," and build "hydrogen corridors," forming a benchmark hydrogen energy transportation mega-demonstration project with comprehensiveness, scale, and influence. This has also pointed the way for more regions and enterprises to actively carry out the construction of hydrogen expressways and hydrogen corridors, primarily focusing on medium-to-long-distance and medium-to-heavy-duty application scenarios along expressway networks to promote the cross-regional operation of fuel cell vehicles.
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