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.<\/p>\n
The deal was announced on April 2 and completed eleven days later. Cummins<\/strong><\/a> confirmed to Railway Gazette International<\/a> 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<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Cummins’s diesel franchise is intact. Its hydrogen franchise is in retreat.<\/p>\n The legal entity transferred to Alstom is Hydrogenics Corporation, a fuel cell developer headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, that Cummins acquired in September 2019 for an enterprise value of about $290 million, paying $15 per share in cash. Cummins originally took 81.4% of the shares<\/a> while Air Liquide kept a 19% stake, which Cummins then bought out in 2023.<\/p>\n Hydrogenics was the partner Alstom selected back in 2015 to develop and supply the fuel cells for its Coradia iLint hydrogen trains. The relationship survived the Cummins acquisition and was scaled up in 2022 with the opening of a dedicated Hydrogen Fuel Cell Systems Production Center in Herten, in northwest Germany<\/a>. That site sits on the grounds of a former mine inside a state-designated hydrogen park and was built specifically to produce fuel cell stacks for the Coradia iLint, at an initial capacity of 10 megawatts per year.<\/p>\n Alstom confirmed to International Railway Journal<\/a> that the Herten manufacturing and assembly site is part of the deal. The acquisition also includes the engineering, product, and support capabilities used to maintain Alstom’s existing hydrogen fleets in Germany, Italy, and France, and to complete contracted programs for the Coradia iLint and the Italian Coradia Stream H. Alstom EVP and Chief Operating Officer Danny Di Perna said the move “gives us the capabilities we need to support reliability growth and maintenance for our installed fleet and to conclude the development of our contracted programmes.”<\/p>\n Cummins’s exit from hydrogen rail did not happen in a vacuum. It is the second leg of a broader withdrawal from a business that the company spent the better part of a decade building.<\/p>\n On February 5, 2026, Cummins released its full-year 2025 results<\/a> and disclosed $458 million in charges related to the electrolyzer business inside its Accelera segment, the unit that houses all of its zero-emissions activities. Of those charges, $415 million were non-cash impairments. The same release confirmed Cummins would “stop pursuing new commercial activity in electrolysers” while continuing to honor existing customer commitments, citing weak demand and uncertainty around government incentives.<\/p>\n The Q4 2025 hit was $218 million by itself. Cummins recorded an additional $210 million non-cash goodwill impairment in Q3 2025, plus $30 million in inventory write-downs. Q1 2026 brought another $199 million in charges directly attributable to closing the fuel cell sale and absorbing related customer obligations, bringing the cumulative tab to roughly $657 million across a fifteen-month window.<\/p>\n Cummins CEO Jennifer Rumsey, addressing the Q1 2026 results from Columbus, Indiana, said the company recorded the additional charges “reflecting lower hydrogen adoption expectations and our continued commitment to focusing investments and reducing losses within the Accelera segment.” That language is corporate code for retreat under fire.<\/p>\n The contrast with Cummins’s earlier posture is sharp. At its 2020 Hydrogen Day, the company told investors that hydrogen, and electrolyzers in particular, would be one of its fastest-growing units over the following years. By 2024, the Accelera segment had its own brand and was opening new fuel cell production lines in Herten. By February 2026, the electrolyzer business was being shut to new customers. By May, the rail fuel cell unit was gone.<\/p>\n None of this touches the part of Cummins that American truck buyers know.<\/p>\n The latest-generation 6.7-liter Cummins Turbo Diesel<\/a> launched alongside the 2025 Ram Heavy Duty refresh and carries through into the 2026 model year unchanged in its high-output rating of 430 horsepower and 1,075 lb-ft of torque, the best-in-class diesel torque figure Ram leans on in every Heavy Duty sales pitch. The same 6.7-liter inline-six also powers the 2026 Ram 3500, 4500, and 5500 Chassis Cab. Cummins has been the supplier under the hood of these trucks since 2007 and traces its diesel relationship with Dodge and then Stellantis back to 1989.<\/p>\n Power Systems, the Cummins segment that houses heavy-duty diesel and natural gas engines, just posted a record quarter. Q1 2026 group revenues hit $8.4 billion, and the company raised full-year guidance to between 8% and 11% growth, citing data center backup power demand and a recovery in North American truck markets.<\/p>\n What changed is the part of the company that was supposed to replace diesel. The American engine maker that wrote the playbook for heavy-duty combustion still owns the playbook. The chapter labeled hydrogen has been quietly torn out and mailed to France.<\/p>\n The trains Alstom now controls end-to-end represent the most successful commercial deployment of fuel cell rail in the world.<\/p>\n The Coradia iLint received passenger-service approval from the German Federal Railway Authority<\/a> in July 2018 and entered commercial service in Lower Saxony on September 17 of that year, becoming the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell passenger train. The pre-series ran on the Cuxhaven\u2013Bremerhaven\u2013Bremerv\u00f6rde\u2013Buxtehude line for evb, owned by transport authority LNVG, which had ordered 14 production units in November 2017 with a 30-year maintenance and energy contract.<\/p>\nWhat Alstom actually acquired<\/h2>\n
The $458 million reason Cummins is leaving<\/h2>\n
The diesel side stays exactly where it is<\/h2>\n
The Coradia iLint, seven years later<\/h2>\n