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Stumbling Zombies of Hydrogen
Why Plug Power, Ballard Power, and FuelCell Energy’s ongoing financial gymnastics can’t mask fundamental market flaws.
Plug Power’s stock dipped into dangerous territory, trading below the critical $1 threshold required by Nasdaq for more than a month, signaling yet another existential crisis for the firm. This isn’t the first time Plug has flirted with financial oblivion, of course; the company executed a 1-for-10 reverse stock split back in 2011 to dodge delisting. But despite repeated rescues and perpetual financial gymnastics, the underlying realities remain unchanged: Plug Power continues to burn cash at unsustainable rates, with little indication that profitability is on any near horizon.
Plug Power was founded in 1997 with grand promises of revolutionizing energy through residential hydrogen fuel cells, a market that never materialized. A swift pivot brought Plug into the industrial forklift fuel cell space, signing marquee customers such as Amazon and Walmart. These deals, initially lauded as transformative, merely provided a brief illusion of commercial traction without ever achieving sustainable profit margins. 60 years after the first hydrogen forklift was manufactured, there are still homeopathic numbers of them, 50,000–70,000, mostly in U.S. distribution centers, when million…
