Only water vapour from the exhaust pipe. It seemed like a project destined to end up gathering dust in a drawer. Instead, in Bolzano, near the A22 motorway exit, the first green hydrogen filling station is up and running.

Yes, because — to avoid any sterile debate about fuel production — the hydrogen here is produced directly on site through the electrolysis process, using only energy from renewable sources such as photovoltaic and hydroelectric power. The forecourt of the filling station is capable of supplying hundreds of vehicles and around twenty buses. It is a wide-ranging project that aims, within the coming years, to create a refuelling network across the whole of Europe. To date, 5 Daimler buses are already in service, while the first Hyundai fuel cell cars intended for private owners are due to arrive by summer.

Inside this hangar-like structure, buses can fill up.

The 5 sisters bet on H2. Toyota, Hyundai, Daimler and BMW are the automotive giants that have joined the HyFive project. It is a multimillion-euro project (38 million euros), co-funded by the European Union, which aims to make hydrogen accessible and sustainable as an alternative fuel. Numerous projects have been launched to create a genuine refuelling network — from London to Copenhagen, via Stuttgart and Munich, heading down towards Innsbruck and reaching as far as Bolzano, where the Institute for Innovative Technologies and the Brenner Motorway A22 were the first to bet on hydrogen as the fuel of tomorrow.

To be clear, this is still a trial, but the stated intention — given the scale of the financial investment — is to make water-based mobility available to everyone within the space of a few decades.