Fueling What’s Next

How FirstElement Fuel founded by UC Irvine alumni built the world’s most extensive hydrogen fueling network—and why that matters more than ever.

June 12, 2025 - In 2009, Tim Brown got behind the wheel of a car he didn’t quite believe could exist. It was a prototype hydrogen fuel cell vehicle developed by Toyota, and from the moment he pressed the accelerator, it upended his expectations.

The car started instantly. The motor was silent. It promised a 300-mile range. None of it matched what Brown understood to be technically possible.

“The car did things that, in the academic world, shouldn’t be possible,” he recalls.

And yet, there he was, driving down the road in a vehicle powered entirely by hydrogen and emitting nothing but water vapor.

At the time, Brown was managing hydrogen station operations and leading a Sustainable Transportation team at UC Irvine’s Advanced Power and Energy Program (APEP) (now the Clean Energy Institute). He had just completed his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with APEP Director Scott Samuelsen as his advisor. Jack Brouwer, CEI’s current Director, was also on Brown’s doctoral committee, providing invaluable guidance from two of the field’s most respected voices. Brown knew the science—he could build a functioning fuel cell in a day—but it was driving that prototype that shifted his perspective. It wasn’t the theory that convinced him hydrogen vehicles were ready. It was the ride.

A hydrogen fuel cell is a device that generates electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Long used in aerospace and industrial settings, the technology is gaining renewed momentum as a bridge between renewable energy and high-efficiency transportation.

Because hydrogen is energy-dense and exceptionally light (it’s the lightest element in the universe), fuel cell vehicles are particularly well suited for long-range travel and heavy-duty applications—where weight, refueling time, and cargo capacity matter. They produce zero tailpipe emissions and can be refueled in minutes, making them a practical and scalable solution for decarbonizing sectors like freight and intercity transit, where battery-electric vehicles often fall short. In these harder-to-electrify corners of transportation, hydrogen doesn’t just complement clean energy—it completes the puzzle.

But even the most promising technology can’t succeed without infrastructure. And for all the potential of hydrogen-powered vehicles, almost no one was building the network to support them. That realization became the basis of a conversation Brown had with Dr. Shane Stephens, a fellow UC Irvine Ph.D. advised by Professor Samuelsen. The two had watched for years as hydrogen remained stranded between promise and implementation.

“Tim and Shane arrived at APEP with different backgrounds to pursue graduate study in sustainable energy concepts,” says Professor Samuelsen. “APEP provides the opportunity to explore technical pathways in a program that also considers the socio-economic and political realities associated with energy transformation. They leveraged that foundation to recognize and fill a void that petroleum companies, experienced in the production and dispensing of gasoline, were unwilling to tackle in the nascent hydrogen market.”

So, they wrote a business plan—not to start a company, but to convince someone else to.

“We went around to a lot of people we knew in industry,” Brown says. “Everyone thought it was a great idea. But no one wanted to do it.”

Eventually, the conversation shifted.

“Shane twisted my arm and said, ‘You know, we have to do it.’ But that was never, never the plan,” Brown says.

“They took on great risks and invested their creativity, talents and time to build a hydrogen fueling network for the first time anywhere in the world,” said Jack Brouwer, Professor and Chancellor's Fellow at UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering and Director of Clean Energy Institute.

In 2013, Brown, Stephens, and automotive industry veteran Joel Ewanick co-founded FirstElement Fuel (FEF). With loans from Toyota and Honda, and grant support from the California Energy Commission, they began the company with the objective to build the infrastructure that would make hydrogen-powered mobility viable.

“Dr. Tim Brown and Dr. Shane Stephens founded FirstElement Fuel at a time when investments in hydrogen fueling infrastructure were critical to the initial introduction of fuel cell electric vehicles in California,” says Jack Brouwer, director of UC Irvine’s Clean Energy Institute. “They took on great risks and invested their creativity, talents and time to build a hydrogen fueling network for the first time anywhere in the world.”

Today, FEF is the world leader in retail hydrogen. Its True Zero network, headquartered in Irvine, now comprises 40 stations and 93 fueling positions across the state and provides about 90 percent of all retail hydrogen fuel dispensed in the country.

Crucially, hydrogen can be produced using excess renewable energy, effectively transforming clean electricity into a storable fuel. This makes hydrogen one of the few viable tools for balancing the grid—capturing power when wind and solar are abundant and dispatching it when demand is high or generation dips.

“Renewable energy is intermittent. Solar doesn’t operate at night and wind is seasonal,” Brown says. “Hydrogen provides a buffer. You can make it when renewables are abundant and use it when they’re not.”

California, with its aggressive zero-emission vehicle mandates and its public funding initiatives, has become the most active hydrogen mobility market in the U.S. The state supports more hydrogen vehicles than anywhere else (currently about 18,000) and it’s home to 49 fueling stations. According to Brown, the ratio of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles to stations is ten times higher in California than anywhere else in the world.

“California really is the only place this could work,” Brown says. “It’s the policy, the public will, the funding—it’s all here.”

Being in Irvine has also given FEF a strategic advantage. The company has maintained a pipeline for engineering talent and systems-level thinkers.

“UCI has been a great source of people who understand both the technical and the systems-level thinking this work requires,” Brown says.

The company’s early focus was light-duty vehicles, with a strategy to create a connected, statewide network. But in recent years, it has shifted its attention to freight. In 2023, FEF opened the first commercial hydrogen fuel station for big-rig trucks in the U.S. A partnership with Bosch Rexroth is now helping them develop the next-generation fueling equipment to serve medium- and heavy-duty vehicles with even higher capacity and reliability.

“They advanced fueling technology and integrated systems as well as service and maintenance models that led to the most reliable network of hydrogen fueling stations, outperforming even the largest and most experienced hydrogen and fueling station companies,” says Brouwer.

The biggest hurdle now is cost. “There’s no quick win here. But we’re building something foundational. Once it’s in place, everything else gets easier,” said Tim Brown, Founder and CEO of FirstElement Fuel (FEF).

In early 2023, FEF was able to sell hydrogen at under $13 per kilogram—roughly on par with gasoline in cost per mile, thanks in part to California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program. But when LCFS prices fell, the economics shifted. As of spring 2025, the price of hydrogen has risen to around $36 per kilogram, well outside the comfort zone for most drivers.

When asked about the spike, Brown grins and pretends his Zoom connection has frozen. “Can’t hear you,” he jokes. The humor softens a serious point: the hydrogen economy remains sensitive to infrastructure scale, and market maturity.

But there’s reason for optimism. As the cost of electrolyzers (a device that uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen) continues to fall, clean hydrogen produced from water, biogas, and other renewable sources is expected to drop below $2.00 per kilogram at scale, according to Brouwer and other experts. And as delivery infrastructure—pipelines, trucking, and liquefaction—expands, distribution costs are expected to follow. Together, these shifts could make hydrogen competitive with fossil fuels for the first time.

For now, FEF remains committed to improving performance and driving down cost. All the hydrogen it dispenses today is made from nearly 100 percent renewable sources, with future contracts tied to wind and solar. The result is a retail fuel with near-zero lifecycle emissions—something few, if any, commercially available fuels can currently claim.

“There’s no quick win here,” Brown says. “But we’re building something foundational. Once it’s in place, everything else gets easier.”

This commitment has earned FEF a spot as a Tier 1 partner in ARCHES (Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems), the  California-based hydrogen hub selected by the U.S. Department for a $1.2 billion investment. As part of that effort, FEF will receive $75 million to develop 12 additional heavy-duty fueling stations.

Despite the scale and ambition of FEF’s work, Brown remains tethered to the experience that first convinced him hydrogen could be real. That prototype, years ago, drove better than any academic model had predicted. It was a reminder that sometimes the gap between theory and reality can close faster than anyone predicts.

FirstElement’s roots at UC Irvine are a reminder of what public research institutions make possible—an ecosystem where theory, experimentation, and industry meet. The leap from idea to implementation didn’t happen in a straight line. It happened because people who understood the science stayed with it long enough to make it real.

- Jill Kato/ UCI Beall Applied Innovation