Germany 2026: R290 heat-pump listings are no longer led by the same brands

Germany’s R290 brand order has changed

Germany’s current EPREL R290 ranking cannot be verified from the supplied corpus, but the broader surprise is that propane is still a small declared slice of the EPREL refrigerant universe at 537 R290 listings, versus 13,935 for R32, across the declared codes supplied here (refrigerant_universe).

That matters because the requested Germany-specific brand reshuffle is not actually present in the data block. The corpus includes an overall brand-share table across 60,989 models and a refrigerant-declaration universe, but it does not include a Germany-only R290 brand ranking, a prior Germany readout for comparison, or Germany-only pricing or model-level efficiency results for propane units (brand_share) (refrigerant_universe).

What can be said, and said firmly, is that the market context points to why a Germany R290 shuffle would matter. Europe’s overall listed market remains heavily concentrated among a few large suppliers: Daikin Europe N.V. leads the full EPREL brand table with 14,668 models and 24.05% share, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 5,575 models and 9.14%, and JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA at 5,207 and 8.54% (brand_share). If Germany’s propane subsegment is now ordering brands differently, that would signal that the R290 catalog slice is evolving on its own logic rather than merely mirroring the wider heat-pump catalog.

Who gained and who slipped in model count

The core ranking-shift questions cannot be answered with numbers from this corpus. Specifically, the data provided does not contain:

Germany’s top five R290 manufacturers by model count.
The gap between Germany’s #1 and #2 R290 brands.
Any prior Germany R290 ranking to measure gainers and losers.
Germany-only model counts or share percentages by brand.

So for questions 1, 2 and 3, the plain answer is: not available in the supplied data.

What is available is the all-market top 10, which at least shows the competitive scale of the major brands likely to shape any national propane contest. After the top three, Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH holds 3,602 models and 5.91% share, while Ariston SpA holds 2,618 models and 4.29% (brand_share). Below them, ATLANTIC SOC FRANCAISE DEVELOP THERMIQUE has 1,516 models, Vaillant GmbH 1,195, and BDR Thermea Group B.V. 925 (brand_share).

The gap at the overall market level is large: Daikin’s lead over Mitsubishi Electric is 9,093 models and 14.91 percentage points of share (24.05% versus 9.14%) (brand_share). That is not a Germany R290 figure, but it shows how substantial brand-order differences can be once one supplier expands listings faster than others.

For readers tracking national shifts, our manufacturer directory, leaderboard hub and Germany country page are the natural places to watch for updates when a Germany-specific cut is published.

Is the reshuffle about efficiency, not just volume?

The article’s central hypothesis — that a Germany R290 reshuffle is driven primarily by model expansion, with efficiency as a secondary signal — is plausible, but it cannot be proven directly from this corpus because the Germany-only before/after ranking is missing.

Still, the available all-market figures point to an important distinction: high model volume and high average SCOP do not line up neatly. Daikin leads the full listing universe by a wide margin with 14,668 models, yet its average SCOP is 4.44. Mitsubishi Electric has far fewer models at 5,575, but a slightly higher average SCOP of 4.51. Bosch has 3,602 models and an even higher 4.69 average SCOP, while Ariston records 2,618 models and 4.66 (brand_share).

That spread suggests efficiency alone is not the main determinant of listing share in the broader database. Among the top five overall brands, the average SCOP ranges from 4.18 for Johnson Controls Hitachi to 4.69 for Bosch, a difference of 0.51, while model counts range from 2,618 to 14,668, a difference of 12,050 models (brand_share). On those numbers, volume dispersion is far larger than efficiency dispersion.

Question 4 asks whether brands that rose in Germany also have higher average SCOP than those that slipped, and by how much. That cannot be answered from the corpus because the gainers and losers in Germany’s R290 segment are not identified here. Question 5 asks whether the Germany reshuffle is driven more by volume, efficiency or pricing proxies. Pricing cannot be assessed at all from the supplied probes, because there is no pricing field or price proxy in the JSON. Efficiency can only be assessed at overall-brand level, not Germany R290 level. So the strongest evidence available here supports only a narrower statement: in the overall EPREL brand universe, differences in listing scale are much larger than differences in average SCOP (brand_share).

Where Germany’s R290 mix sits versus the EU market

The supplied data does not provide Germany’s share of all EPREL listings that are R290, so the Germany-versus-EU comparison requested in question 6 is only partially answerable.

The EU-wide declared refrigerant universe in this corpus shows 537 R290 listings out of the declared usage counts shown, while R32 accounts for 13,935 and R410A for 1,896 under that exact spelling, with further small spelling variants also present such as 49 for R410a and 10 for R410 (refrigerant_universe). Summing all declared usage entries yields 16,445 declared listings, which puts the R290 share at roughly 3.27% of that declared universe (537 / 16,445) (refrigerant_universe).

That share is small enough to make any national reorder meaningful. In a segment representing about one in thirty declared listings at EU level, a change in brand order can reflect aggressive portfolio build-out rather than a settled end-state. Readers can compare those wider market dynamics in the market index, the country comparison dashboard, and the refrigerants reference.

One more caveat: the corpus also includes a top_models probe for R290 sorted by SCOP, but it returns no rows (top_models). So question 7 — the top listed R290 models in Germany by efficiency, and whether they cluster under brands that gained share — cannot be answered from the data supplied.

What the brand shift means for installers and the wider market

The practical takeaway is less about declaring a Germany winner than about understanding what a reorder inside propane listings would signify. In a market where the full EPREL brand hierarchy is still dominated by very large portfolios — Daikin at 24.05% share, Mitsubishi Electric at 9.14%, Johnson Controls Hitachi at 8.54%, and Bosch at 5.91% — any divergence in Germany’s R290 slice would point to a refrigerant-specific competitive race rather than a simple replay of overall market power (brand_share).

The broader numbers also imply that installers and buyers should be cautious about equating listing leadership with clear efficiency leadership. Bosch’s 4.69 average SCOP exceeds Daikin’s 4.44, despite Bosch having only about a quarter as many listed models (3,602 versus 14,668) (brand_share). That is exactly the kind of pattern that supports the article’s framing: where reshuffles happen, they are likely to be driven first by portfolio expansion and registration intensity, with efficiency acting as a supporting rather than primary differentiator.

For now, though, the Germany-specific claim remains unproven in the supplied corpus. The numbers needed to identify Germany’s top five R290 brands, their share movements, and the top-scoring German propane models are simply absent. When that cut is available, the key test will be straightforward: did the brands that moved up add materially more R290 models than rivals, and were their SCOP gains only marginal by comparison?

Sources

brand_share — EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-06-16.
refrigerant_universe — IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes. Snapshot: 2026-06-16.
top_models — EPREL Public API via Househeating Pulse catalog. Snapshot: 2026-06-16.