Renault’s hydrogen subsidiary Hyvia still gasps for air

Hyvia, the French hydrogen specialist joint venture between Renault and Plug Power, entered administration on December 10, 2024. The courts have now decided to extend the administration period to find an investor or an acquirer. But with no interested parties on the horizon and no real interest from Renault CEO Luca de Meo, the company’s future seems bleak.

To recall, Hyvia was founded in 2021 as a joint venture between Renault and American fuel cell developer Plug Power. The company focused mainly on developing hydrogen fuel cell drivetrains for commercial vehicles, and several variants of the Renault Master are shown running on hydrogen.

Insolvency procedure since December

But the company has not succeeded in taking off. When announcing its legal recovery procedure (also known as insolvency or administration), Hyvia mentions, “The too slow evolution of hydrogen mobility ecosystems in Europe and the very significant development costs required for H2 innovation led to this decision.”

Now, the courts have decided to extend the administration procedure past the initial January 31 deadline, hoping to find an investor or acquirer.

Indeed, hydrogen is struggling to become viable as an alternative to batteries inside and outside of Europe. The hydrogen passenger vehicle market is pretty much limited to the Hyundai Nexo, which will soon get a successor, and the Toyota Mirai, which has been a loss-leader for the Japanese manufacturer.

Hydrogen struggling to break through

Hydrogen commercial vehicles make more sense, as quicker refueling than battery-electric vehicles means more uptime. Stellantis offers hydrogen versions of the entire light commercial vehicle range, which are built in-house, but the question remains how much of these fuel cell vans they sell.

On the heavy commercial vehicle side, the lack of infrastructure and the high cost, paired with a less urgent need to electrify, mean that specialized manufacturers such as Nikola also face bankruptcy. Other manufacturers are still in the trial phase, while truckmakers like Volvo are looking into hydrogen combustion to lower the purchase price of these trucks.

Most viable as a niche for commercial vehicles?

All of this means that Hyvia will probably not make it, especially not as a mainstream powertrain manufacturer. Automobile Propre quotes Renault CEO Luca de Meo as saying that hydrogen vehicles “are not selling to lack of sufficient demand” and that hydrogen is arriving “much more slowly than expected.”

Meanwhile, the French manufacturer has just unveiled its new range of battery-electric vans developed by Flexis, the joint venture between Renault and Volvo Trucks.

If Hyvia does succeed in finding an investor, it will likely need to downscale and focus on a more niche market to survive instead of waiting for the market to finally, if ever, embrace hydrogen as a viable alternative.