KEYOU's EIC Accelerator Hydrogen Truck Engine, Six Years On

KEYOU does not build fuel cells or batteries. It takes an ordinary diesel truck engine, changes the injection, ignition and engine software, and runs it on hydrogen. In January 2020 the European Innovation Council picked the Munich company's H2Engine project in the EIC Accelerator pilot cut-off of 8 January 2020, with blended finance, and the EU paid €1,533,877.63 of the project's €2,191,253.76 cost, according to CORDIS. The Commission's list names KEYOU as the only company in the project. In June 2021 the EIC Fund signed on as a shareholder with a €5.8 million investment, Munich Startup reported.

The project did what it set out to do: a prototype 18-tonne truck with a hydrogen engine was built and tested. What came after has been slower. The first customer truck was promised for the end of 2023 and handed over in December 2024. The heavy 40-tonne tractor unit, first promised for 2026, now depends on a partnership with Daimler Truck that targets a 2027 launch.

Where KEYOU Stands Now

KEYOU is active. On 22 June 2026 it announced that Daimler Truck will sell it Mercedes-Benz Actros L 1848 tractor units and 12.8-litre engines made in Mannheim, which KEYOU and outside conversion partners will turn into hydrogen trucks; "Market launch is planned for 2027", the company's release says. The law firm POELLATH, which advised KEYOU, confirmed the agreement on 19 August 2026 and wrote that the first vehicles are expected "from 2027 onwards". The resulting truck, the KEYOU HICE.40, is rated at up to 350 kW with a range of up to 650 kilometres on 350-bar hydrogen tanks, according to KEYOU.

The management has changed this year. Markus A. Schneider stopped being a managing director on 19 February 2026 and Olaf F. Bergner was appointed on 2 July 2026, according to the register entries shown by North Data; the company website lists Bergner as chief financial officer. The same register record lists DILO Armaturen und Anlagen GmbH as a shareholder from March 2026 and annual accounts for 2023 and 2024 filed in April 2025 and August 2026. No insolvency notice appears.

The Technology: A Diesel Engine That Burns Hydrogen

Battery and fuel-cell trucks replace the engine. KEYOU keeps it. Its "KEYOU-inside" parts are "components that can be integrated into new or existing combustion engines and enables the engine to run on hydrogen", the H2Engine objective on CORDIS says. In the 18-tonne truck, a 7.8-litre six-cylinder engine on a diesel platform delivers 210 kW; hydrogen is injected into the intake at up to 15 bar and spark plugs ignite it, KEYOU said in May 2023. Truck and Bus Builder identifies the base engine as a Deutz unit with 1,000 Nm of torque.

The case for the approach is cost and familiarity. KEYOU told the EU's CORDIS news service that "fuel cell vehicles are significantly more expensive" and that a hydrogen engine should cost about as much to produce as a natural gas engine. The project's final report adds that any mechanic trained on diesel or gas engines can maintain it and that existing engine plants can be converted. The trade-off is that a combustion engine still emits nitrogen oxides, which KEYOU says its own combustion process keeps low enough to meet Euro VI without exhaust after-treatment, in the same May 2023 release. Its claim of a 44.5% test-bench efficiency in 2018, on its own website, has not been independently confirmed.

What H2Engine Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

H2Engine ran from 1 September 2020 to 31 August 2022, on schedule, according to CORDIS. Its main goal, the report says, was to take the hydrogen engine from stationary operation on a test bench (TRL 6) to transient operation in a working vehicle (TRL 9), and to qualify it as zero-emission technology under the EU's Clean Vehicles Directive. The report records that a two-axle 18-tonne truck was built and tested, that a quality management system was set up, and that after the project "the demonstrator vehicle will be handed to an end-customer" ahead of "a pre-series fleet of trucks and buses". The application had set a sales target: "162.9 Mio by 2024".

1. Hydrogen engine running in a truckDelivered18-tonne prototype built and tested, per the CORDIS report; on public roads from April 2023, per KEYOU.
2. Zero-emission classificationDeliveredHydrogen combustion trucks count as zero-emission under EU rules, per the HyCET consortium; TÜV approval of hydrogen parts, per CORDIS.
3. Pre-series fleet of trucks and busesPartlyEight trucks promised for late 2023; one handed over in December 2024. No bus fleet announced.
4. Commercial launch 2023, series production 2024MissedSeries launch now planned for 2027 with Daimler Truck.
5. Sales of €162.9M by 2024Not achievedNo revenue figure published; the company files as a small company and lost €5.09M in 2022.

The engineering milestone was met within the 24 months. The commercial milestones were not. In January 2023 CORDIS reported that "the team is aiming for a commercial launch in 2023 and serial production from 2024 onwards". Neither date held.

What KEYOU Has Done Since the Award

In May 2023 KEYOU said the Regensburg freight forwarder EP-Trans had signed for two 18-tonne trucks and that "the first eight trucks" would reach pioneer customers in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to its press release. The first truck was handed over to EP-Trans at the Hydrogen Dialogue in December 2024, in the presence of Bavaria's economy minister Hubert Aiwanger. The handover had been planned for the end of 2023 and was postponed several times because a supplier could not deliver a key component, Verkehrsrundschau and KEYOU both report. KEYOU says the truck entered customer operation in 2025. In April 2025 it announced a second 18-tonne customer, Rein Spedition of Saarlouis; a delivery to it has not been announced.

At the IAA in September 2024 KEYOU switched its focus "exclusively" to a 40-tonne offer and put a price on it: from €0.58 per kilometre all-inclusive, with the first Actros-based trucks to roll off the line "in early 2026", it said in November 2024. A TALKE Group company ordered two of them for delivery from 2026, according to KEYOU, and in July 2025 the company said with GP JOULE that its 40-tonne trucks were "expected to be available by the end of 2026". The Daimler agreement now puts the launch in 2027. No delivery of a 40-tonne truck to a customer has been announced.

KEYOU also works for engine makers. Komatsu began proof-of-concept tests in February 2025 of an HD785 dump truck, with a payload of about 92 tonnes, fitted with a hydrogen combustion engine and tank system "co-developed by Komatsu and KEYOU", according to Komatsu; KEYOU calls it the world's first 12-cylinder hydrogen engine for a large dump truck and Komatsu its most important customer project, in its own release. In March 2025 engine rebuilder Bücker + Essing signed a letter of intent to convert more than 1,000 new diesel engines to hydrogen by the end of 2028, with conversions of engines in existing vehicles from 2029, as both Verkehrsrundschau and Motor Transport reported. KEYOU is also a partner in HyCET, a BMW-led project on hydrogen combustion trucks with Deutz, DHL Freight, TotalEnergies and Volvo, which Germany's transport ministry funds with €11.3 million of a €19.5 million budget, according to Deutz. KEYOU's own share of that funding is not stated there. H2Engine is the company's only project on CORDIS.

The Money

KEYOU's early backer was the Nagel group of Nürtingen, which the company says on its history page has backed it since late 2016. In July 2020 ES Kapital, the investment arm of Kreissparkasse Esslingen-Nürtingen, joined a round meant to raise a "double-digit million" sum, Munich Startup reported. The EIC's commitment was described as "up to 7 million euros" in grant and equity by Foundry Planet in November 2020, and as €7.3 million in total, €5.8 million of equity and €1.55 million of grant, by Munich Startup in June 2021; CORDIS puts the grant at €1.53 million. KEYOU GmbH appears in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies.

In June 2024 KEYOU said it had closed the first part of a Series B with "a double-digit million euro amount", led by gas equipment maker DILO with a seven-figure investment and joined by the EIC, the Besto family office and Baywobau, and that it aimed to raise "around €35 million" by the end of 2024, according to its release. The register shows the share capital rising to €50,363 on 7 June 2024, per North Data. Whether the €35 million was reached has not been announced.

The 2022 annual accounts, the latest whose figures are freely readable, show the cost of development. KEYOU lost €5.09 million in 2022 after €5.58 million in 2021, and its equity fell from €5.48 million to €384,310, according to the accounts as extracted from the Unternehmensregister. Liabilities rose to €10.97 million, of which €8.79 million was owed to shareholders. Most of the €11.55 million of assets were €6.53 million of capitalised in-house development. Staff averaged 54, up from 50.

Why Europe Should Care

The EU's CO2 standards for heavy-duty vehicles, adopted in 2024, require emissions from new trucks to fall by 45% from 2030, 65% from 2035 and 90% from 2040 compared with 2019, according to the Commission's Urban Mobility Observatory and DieselNet. Manufacturers will need zero-emission trucks to meet those targets, and hydrogen combustion trucks count as zero-emission under EU rules, according to the HyCET partners.

The industrial argument is the one KEYOU made to the EIC: converting existing engines keeps Europe's engine plants, suppliers and skilled jobs in use, and avoids "precious materials needed for batteries or fuel cells", as the final report puts it. Daimler Truck's decision to supply engines from Mannheim rather than develop hydrogen combustion in-house, set out in the partnership release, is the strongest sign so far that a large European manufacturer sees a market. Whether the market is large enough depends on hydrogen fuel prices and filling stations, which is why KEYOU signs infrastructure partners such as GP JOULE.

The Verdict

KEYOU has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.