Hydrogen stations outside California

Why is there no hydrogen where I live?

Retail hydrogen stations cost several million dollars each and only make sense where there are cars to use them. California funded a network through its Clean Transportation Program and required automakers to sell zero-emission vehicles, so Toyota, Hyundai and Honda sold fuel-cell cars there and almost nowhere else. No other state did both, so no other state has a network. A small Northeast network was planned in the 2010s and never opened to the public.

Hawaii is the exception. Servco, the Toyota distributor for the islands, runs a public station in Honolulu to support the Mirais it sells there.

What the private stations are

The other records are real hydrogen stations, but they are not retail. They fuel transit buses (SARTA in Canton, Ohio), federal fleet vehicles at Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service sites, military vehicles, research programs at places like the National Laboratory of the Rockies in Colorado, and automaker test fleets. Some maps show them as pins without explaining that a member of the public cannot buy fuel there.

If you are thinking about a hydrogen car outside California

Toyota, Hyundai and Honda only sell or lease fuel-cell cars in California (and Toyota in Hawaii) for exactly this reason. A used Mirai can look like a bargain on a national listing site, but without a station in driving range it cannot be refueled. Compare the alternatives in our hydrogen vs electric guide, and see what fuel costs where it is sold with the cost calculator.

The part of the hydrogen market that is growing outside California is freight: truck stations tied to ports and distribution corridors. Those will not serve passenger cars.