ChatGPT generated panoramic bird’s eye image of a fleet of abandoned, broken windowed modern hydrogen fuel cell freight trucks covered in dirt and pigeon droppings parked in a weed filled field

The End of the Hydrogen Highway

Nikola crashes out, joining a growing list of bankrupt fuel cell transport firms

Nikola, with its hydrogen trucks, has finally left the building. The company gained widespread attention after going public via a SPAC merger in 2020, briefly reaching a market valuation of over $30 billion. However, founder Trevor Milton was complicit in the SPAC pump and dump, misleading investors about Nikola’s technological progress — most notably, a promotional video of a truck rolling down a hill presented as a working vehicle.

Milton resigned in September 2020 and was later convicted of fraud, while the company struggled onward. Not anymore. Bankruptcy and asset stripping for pennies on the dollar is the order of the day. This was entirely predictable and predicted, part of my projection of a blood bath in hydrogen for transportation in 2025.

To be clear, all of the hydrogen for transportation plays were effectively dead in 2022, 2023, and 2024 as well, but the thing about startups and subsidiaries that manage to get funding is that they persist as dwindling husks of themselves for years before collapsing entirely. The people still left in the building when the music stops have seriously bad career judgment, as getting out much earlier would have been wiser, while never walking through the doors of…