Hydrogen station status and closures

Are hydrogen stations closing?

Yes, some have, and the network is smaller and less reliable than it was at its peak. But it is churn rather than a straight line down: stations close, reopen and open new at the same time. The honest summary as of September 2026 is that California has a working but fragile retail network of a few dozen stations, and the rest of the country has essentially none.

1. October to December 2023

   First wave of closures

   True Zero closed ten stations, and Shell, Iwatani and Messer shut several more, citing higher hydrogen supply costs and falling Low Carbon Fuel Standard credit values. S&P Global

2. February 6, 2024

   Shell exits car fueling

   Shell permanently closed all seven of its California light-duty stations. Shell's letter to customers cited “hydrogen supply complications and other external market factors.” Shell still operates heavy-duty sites at the ports.

3. 2024 to 2025

   Prices roughly double, reliability improves

   Pump prices that were about $13/kg in 2021 reached $30 to $36/kg. The California Energy Commission's annual assessment counted 50 public stations in September 2025 with average network availability near 60 percent. CEC/CARB AB 126 report

4. July 2025

   First public hydrogen truck stop

   FirstElement (True Zero) opened a high-volume heavy-duty station at the Port of Oakland, built to fuel 200 trucks a day. Truck fueling is now where most new public money is going.

5. February 24, 2026

   Colton trailer explosion

   A compressed-hydrogen delivery trailer exploded at a truck yard in Colton, killing one worker. High-pressure hydrogen trailers were pulled from service across California, and within weeks more than 60 percent of retail stations had no fuel. ABC7 · H2FCP network update

6. Spring to summer 2026

   Slow recovery

   Stations came back in stages, some offering partial fills only while running on low-pressure deliveries. Several stations that went dark during the shortage are still listed with no reopening date.

Why our count differs from other counts

You will see different numbers in different places, and they can all be right. This page counts stations in the U.S. Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center that are public and can fuel a car. The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership's station list (September 8, 2026) counts 42 open retail stations and 13 currently unavailable in California. The gap comes from timing and definitions: the DOE database is re-verified on a rolling schedule, the two lists flip a station to “unavailable” on different criteria, and a few stations appear in one list before the other. When the two disagree about a specific station, trust the partnership's live status page, which is linked from every California row below.

We save a dated snapshot of the DOE data every time this page is rebuilt, so from September 2026 onward this page will show how the count changes over time.