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Say Goodbye to America's Biggest Hydrogen Bet on Trains. Cummings Sold Its Fuel Cell Business After Losing $657 Million
The full article is here: Say Goodbye to America’s Biggest Hydrogen Bet on Trains. Cummins Just Sold Its Fuel Cell Business to a French Rail Company After Losing $657 Million in 15 Months
(May 26, Yesterday as of this writing.)
Cummins paid roughly $290 million for Hydrogenics in 2019. In April 2026, it handed the rail piece of that company to Alstom for a price neither side has disclosed.
The deal was announced on April 2 and completed eleven days later. Cummins confirmed to Railway Gazette International on April 13 that it had finished the sale of the Hydrogenics entity and associated assets and that all regulatory approvals had been obtained. Two months earlier, the same company had booked $458 million in charges against its electrolyzer business and announced it would stop pursuing new sales of electrolyzers altogether. In its first-quarter 2026 results, filed with the SEC on May 5, Cummins recorded another $199 million in charges tied specifically to completing the sale of its low-pressure fuel cell business and related customer obligations.
The two moves are connected. Cummins is the American engine maker that still puts the 6.7-liter Cummins Turbo Diesel under the hood of every 2026 Ram 2500 and Ram 3500 Heavy Duty pickup. It built its hydrogen position in 2019 by buying a Canadian fuel cell company, expanded it with a new factory in Herten, Germany, and is now letting the European customer that used those fuel cells walk off with the rail business that made them work.
Cummins’s diesel franchise is intact. Its hydrogen franchise is in retreat...
The deal was announced on April 2 and completed eleven days later. Cummins confirmed to Railway Gazette International on April 13 that it had finished the sale of the Hydrogenics entity and associated assets and that all regulatory approvals had been obtained. Two months earlier, the same company had booked $458 million in charges against its electrolyzer business and announced it would stop pursuing new sales of electrolyzers altogether. In its first-quarter 2026 results, filed with the SEC on May 5, Cummins recorded another $199 million in charges tied specifically to completing the sale of its low-pressure fuel cell business and related customer obligations.
The two moves are connected. Cummins is the American engine maker that still puts the 6.7-liter Cummins Turbo Diesel under the hood of every 2026 Ram 2500 and Ram 3500 Heavy Duty pickup. It built its hydrogen position in 2019 by buying a Canadian fuel cell company, expanded it with a new factory in Herten, Germany, and is now letting the European customer that used those fuel cells walk off with the rail business that made them work.
Cummins’s diesel franchise is intact. Its hydrogen franchise is in retreat...
Alstom reportedly bought the company in an effort to keep its German hydrogen trains in service.
In Germany, as is the case elsewhere, hydrogen is made by the reformation of methane, with the reaction product carbon dioxide dumped into the planetary atmosphere. Exergy is destroyed in the process.
After 50 years of hydrogen hype, Plus ça change...