With annual sales of hydrogen-powered heavy trucks falling below 5,000 units, why does FAW Jiefang dare to sign a major order for 3,000 units?
FAW Jiefang and Yuntao Hydrogen Energy Sign Cooperation Agreement for 3,000 Hydrogen-Powered Heavy-Duty Trucks with Clarified Division of Responsibilities
As Insight Energy learned, on July 1, FAW Jiefang and Guangdong Yuntao Hydrogen Energy signed a strategic cooperation and business cooperation agreement in Guangzhou. The two parties have clear goals: to promote the bulk sales and practical application of 3,000 Jiefang hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks, and build an integrated solution featuring "vehicle-station-hydrogen" interconnection. FAW Jiefang will provide heavy-duty truck products, while Yuntao Hydrogen Energy will offer fuel cell systems and support for the hydrogen energy supply network.
This is no ordinary vehicle procurement. Liu Jiangwei, Director of the Hydrogen Energy Industry Development Office under the Strategy and Cooperation Department of China FAW, and Zhang Bei, President of Yuntao Hydrogen Energy, signed the strategic agreement; Fan Guoqiang, Executive Deputy General Manager of FAW Jiefang's Marketing Headquarters, and Liu Wei, Co-President of Yuntao Hydrogen Energy, signed the business agreement.
The two agreements extend from product matching to infrastructure and operational services, with clearly defined roles for both parties: Jiefang is responsible for complete vehicles, while Yuntao takes charge of the overall coordination of systems, hydrogen sources, refueling operations, and scenario-based operations.
01
What Roles Do FAW Jiefang and Yuntao Hydrogen Energy Play Respectively?
FAW Jiefang has already ranked first in market share in the new energy heavy-duty truck sector.
It is reported that in 2025, FAW Jiefang sold 44,000 new energy heavy-duty trucks, representing a year-on-year increase of over 300%. However, the sales figures for its hydrogen energy segment remain unclear. An investor asked on an interactive platform whether the company only sold 89 hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks in 2025, and the company merely replied that "hydrogen gas-powered heavy-duty trucks have achieved bulk sales."
On the other hand, according to the latest information from Insight Energy, Yuntao Hydrogen Energy has completed its transformation from a system supplier to a comprehensive service provider. In 2025, the company's fuel cell system installation volume accounted for 20.03% of the national market, with systems matched to 2,077 vehicles — both indicators ranked first nationwide. It invested in and built South China's first hydrogen refueling station with "4 dispensers and 8 nozzles", which has a maximum daily refueling capacity of 4,000 kilograms — 4 times that of common hydrogen refueling stations in China — and sells hydrogen at 27.5 yuan per kilogram, the lowest price in South China. In 2025, Yuntao had 2 operational hydrogen refueling stations, 6 stations under construction, 4 stations acquired through holding, and 32 stations in the planning stage in Guangdong Province. In terms of hydrogen sources, Yuntao joined forces with local state-owned enterprises to acquire a 51% stake in Shaoguan Hydrogen Source, with a first-phase annual production capacity of 5,700 tons.
The core of the cooperation between the two parties lies in connecting Yuntao's hydrogen source guarantee, hydrogen refueling network, and operational experience with FAW Jiefang's complete vehicle manufacturing and channel capabilities. Yuntao needs to provide full-chain support for FAW Jiefang's 3,000 heavy-duty trucks, ranging from hydrogen supply to refueling facilities and then to operation and maintenance, while FAW Jiefang will focus on complete vehicle delivery.
In fact, this division of labor is not the norm in the hydrogen-powered heavy-duty truck industry.
Under the traditional model, fuel cell system manufacturers take on too many responsibilities that are outside their core competencies. For example, early system manufacturers such as Yihuatong, Guohong Hydrogen Energy, and REFIRE — whose main businesses are stack R&D and system integration — had to participate in hydrogen refueling station construction and hydrogen source coordination to promote vehicle sales. These tasks go beyond the professional scope of system manufacturers, dispersing R&D resources and increasing financial burdens.
Yuntao's role is different. As a "general contractor", it integrates resources from all links, connecting fragmented hydrogen sources, refueling stations, and vehicles into a complete solution that can be delivered to end users.
From an industry perspective, complete vehicle manufacturers are returning to manufacturing, system manufacturers are upgrading to scenario-based solution providers, and hydrogen sources and infrastructure are handled by professional partners. The signing of the agreement between FAW Jiefang and Yuntao marks the first implementation of this division of labor model on a 3,000-unit scale.
02
Why Is the Order Signed Right Now?
Insight Energy believes that 3,000 units is a figure that needs to be examined in the context of the current market size.
It is understood that from January to April 2026, the cumulative delivery of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles across China reached 1,832 units, of which 1,079 were hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks. In other words, this single order covers nearly three months of the country's total deliveries of hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks.
However, the proportion of hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks in the overall heavy-duty truck market remains small. In 2025, 231,100 new energy heavy-duty trucks were sold, while only 4,604 fuel cell tractors were sold, with a penetration rate of less than 2%.
The constraints are concentrated on two fronts: acquisition costs and infrastructure.
In terms of acquisition costs, a hydrogen-powered heavy-duty truck is priced at about 1.5 million yuan, and still costs about 900,000 yuan after subsidies, while a diesel heavy-duty truck of the same specification only costs 270,000 to 350,000 yuan. In terms of infrastructure, by the end of 2025, a total of 200 hydrogen refueling stations had been built in the five major demonstration city clusters, concentrated in a few demonstration cities, leaving cross-regional operations without sufficient guarantees.
High acquisition costs limit users' willingness to purchase, insufficient hydrogen refueling facilities further reduce users' confidence in usage, and the inability to expand market size makes it difficult to spread costs. This cycle has continued to restrict the development of the industry over the past few years.
Previously, the responsibility for breaking this cycle mainly fell on system manufacturers. However, the core competencies of system manufacturers lie in technological R&D and cost control, and they do not have the resources and experience for large-scale infrastructure construction and cross-link operations. The result is often that R&D investment is squeezed, and operational links continue to suffer losses.
Yuntao has chosen a different path. Before obtaining the order from FAW Jiefang, Yuntao had completed hundred-unit-level supporting cooperation with Sany Automotive, Dongfeng Motor, GAC Group, Sinotruk, and XCMG Group, and signed an agreement with Qingling Motors for 300 units of 4.5-ton hydrogen fuel cell refrigerated trucks in September 2025.
These projects have accumulated experience in integrating multiple complete vehicle brands and diverse application scenarios for Yuntao, and enabled it to build closed-loop capabilities covering hydrogen production, storage and transportation, refueling, and operation.
By 2026, Yuntao had put more than 2,000 hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks into operation in total. Obtaining the 3,000-unit order from FAW Jiefang on this basis is not a tentative attempt starting from scratch, but a large-scale replication of an existing mature model.
03
Can This Business Model Be Successfully Implemented?
Shanghai Hydrogen Power Energy Group is another enterprise that has adopted a similar integrated model.
In January 2026, 300 hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks were put into operation in Fuyuan County, Yunnan Province. The purchaser was a local coal mining enterprise, not a government demonstration project. Hydrogen Power Energy built a 300MW wind power plant and an electrolytic water hydrogen production plant with a capacity of 15,000 standard cubic meters per hour in Fuyuan, enabling on-site consumption of hydrogen produced from wind power and eliminating storage and transportation costs. After the full operation of the project, the annual coal transportation capacity is expected to exceed 4.8 million tons.
In the Fuyuan project, the terminal price of hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks is 200,000 yuan lower than that of pure electric heavy-duty trucks, and the comprehensive operating cost under the high-intensity working conditions of mining areas is 78% to 87% of that of pure electric heavy-duty trucks. These figures come from actual operations, not theoretical calculations.
In March, this model was replicated in Zhengzhou, where Hydrogen Power Energy joined forces with Yutong Commercial Vehicles and the Henan Hydrogen Power Capacity platform to deploy 171 hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks, using local industrial by-product hydrogen as the hydrogen source.
The similarity between the paths of Yuntao and Hydrogen Power Energy lies in that both position themselves as organizers of the industrial chain rather than producers of a single product. By locking in specific transportation scenarios, securing low-cost hydrogen sources, and coordinating refueling facilities, they enable end users to obtain calculable economic benefits. When the economic viability is established, purchasers can be market-oriented enterprises without relying on financial subsidies.
However, the applicable boundaries of this model are equally clear.
The prerequisite for economic viability is controllable hydrogen prices. Yuntao uses industrial by-product hydrogen in Guangdong, and Hydrogen Power Energy uses hydrogen produced from wind power in Fuyuan — both rely on local resource endowments. Outside these specific regions, the cost of hydrogen may double, and economic viability will no longer exist.
The 3,000-unit cooperation between Yuntao and FAW Jiefang clearly takes "scenario-based operations" as the implementation premise, which means that vehicle deployment will be concentrated in specific regions with low-cost hydrogen sources and stable transportation demand, rather than being rolled out nationwide.
Costs remain another constraint. Yuntao has increased the localization rate of its core components to 100% and reduced costs by 70%, but the absolute selling price of 900,000 yuan after subsidies is still significantly higher than that of diesel heavy-duty trucks. After the subsidy policy is phased out, economic viability will face challenges if no further cost reduction is achieved.
Currently, the industry generally believes that the hydrogen-powered heavy-duty truck segment needs to increase its fleet size to the level of 10,000 or even 100,000 units before the cost curve can enter a rapid decline phase. However, the expansion of fleet size depends on prior cost reduction. Taking 3,000 units as the starting point, Yuntao and FAW Jiefang are verifying the business model in controllable scenarios before seeking replication, which is a relatively pragmatic promotion path under the current conditions.
Relevant reports from the China Automotive Technology and Research Center (CATARC) point out that the successful implementation of a viable business model for fuel cell vehicles requires the organization of local governments, the leadership of leading enterprises, the prioritization of application scenarios, and multi-pronged measures to reduce costs.
The signing of the agreement between FAW Jiefang and Yuntao Hydrogen Energy points to the connection between the two links of "leading enterprise leadership" and "prioritized application scenarios" in this path. The cooperation framework has been established, and the subsequent focus will be on the phased delivery schedule of the 3,000 vehicles, the corresponding construction progress of hydrogen refueling stations, and the cost accounting results of end users in actual operations.
The signing of the contract is just the starting point. The industry's real test of this agreement lies in the operational data after the vehicles are put on the road.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Insight Energy", written by Wang Mengjiao, and published with authorization from 36Kr.