The Great Hydrogen Fleet Flip: Nikola’s Collapse Fueled A New Subsidy Play

Hyroad Energy’s recent acquisition of Nikola Corporation’s hydrogen trucking assets reads like a master class in scavenging from the wreckage of failed subsidy-driven ventures. At Nikola’s bankruptcy auction, Hyroad picked up 113 hydrogen fuel-cell Class 8 trucks, along with spare parts, software platforms, and intellectual property that had been valued at up to $114 million. They paid less than $4 million. In any functioning market, that kind of discount would imply something is badly wrong with the product or the business case. In the world of hydrogen trucking, it is simply the inevitable result of years of public money chasing glossy promises that could not stand on their own economics.

Several familiar faces from Nikola’s leadership circle have resurfaced around the Hyroad acquisition, stepping neatly from one taxpayer-funded hydrogen dream into another. These are executives who spent years promoting Nikola’s vision of a hydrogen trucking revolution, securing hundreds of millions in grants, incentives, and investor cash before the company’s reality collapsed into bankruptcy. Now, rather than exiting the stage, they have positioned themselves inside a new vehicle for the same game: acquire subsidizable assets at fire-sale prices, package them as a fresh “fleet transformation” story, and tap into the next wave of public funding. The technical challenges, weak market demand, and high operating costs that doomed their last act remain unchanged, but the skills that mattered most — navigating subsidy programs, crafting political narratives, and dressing up distressed inventory as strategic infrastructure — are clearly intact.

This is a pattern that has played out repeatedly in the hydrogen mobility space. It starts with an ambitious pitch about decarbonizing long-haul trucking or some similar segment, bundling together vehicles, fueling infrastructure, and service models. Public agencies and politicians, eager to show progress on emissions targets, open the subsidy tap. A few years later, with little commercial traction, the assets change hands at pennies on the dollar. The rhetoric shifts from market transformation to “accelerating adoption” through yet more grants. The real acceleration is in the movement of public money into private pockets, not in freight actually hauled without emissions.

Hyroad’s public record before the Nikola deal is telling. They were awarded more than $9 million from Texas’s THIVE program to deploy 28 hydrogen Class 8 trucks in a trucking-as-a-service model. That funding would not come close to covering the cost of such vehicles at market prices, which typically run $500,000 or more each, even before adding fueling infrastructure. There is no public evidence they had acquired or operated any hydrogen trucks before their auction win. Instead, the Nikola purchase instantly transformed them from an aspiring operator into one of the largest holders of hydrogen trucks in the country, without the years of capital investment that would normally require.

The auction gap between valuation and price deserves scrutiny. Assets that Nikola booked at over $50 million went for less than 8% of that figure. That is not a sign of efficient allocation of capital. It is an indictment of the lack of a real secondary market for hydrogen trucks. The few potential buyers know the cost per mile, fueling headaches, and uncertain residual values make these vehicles unattractive without ongoing subsidies. Their value on paper is tied less to operational performance than to their usefulness in winning the next grant. In that context, Hyroad’s acquisition looks less like an investment in freight decarbonization and more like an investment in subsidy harvesting capacity.

The subsidy machine operates on a familiar playbook. Identify public programs hungry for success stories. Package an offer heavy on conceptual renderings and light on hard economics. Use public funds to offset acquisition or lease costs. If operations stall or economics deteriorate, reframe as an infrastructure or service accelerator to keep the money flowing. The technology remains marginal, but the public reporting shows progress in vehicles deployed and projects announced, which is often enough for the agencies involved.

The hydrogen transport story plays out the same way in city after city, a tragicomedy in six predictable acts. It starts with lobbyists whispering to politicians about how hydrogen will transform fleets and deliver jobs. Grants flow, vehicles are bought, fueling stations are built, and everyone lines up for the photo op. Then the real work begins, and the flaws in the business case appear. The trucks or buses prove expensive to run, fueling is patchy, and downtime piles up. When the subsidies end, the wheels quite literally stop turning. Vehicles are mothballed, infrastructure is idled, and the operators quietly pivot to battery-electric models. Government agencies rarely admit the failure. Instead, the cycle starts fresh somewhere else, often with the same salespeople, the same promises, and the same inevitable ending.

We have seen this in multiple forms. In France’s town of Pau, hydrogen buses costing close to a million euros each were abandoned within a few years. In Germany’s Lower Saxony, hydrogen trains bought for millions were parked after a year of operation. In California’s Santa Cruz, fleets that had soaked up public funding ended up back at the trough asking for more. The thread connecting these cases is not technical impossibility but economic fragility. When the free money stops, so does the fleet.

HTEC presents itself as the backbone of British Columbia’s hydrogen trucking future, promising 100 fuel‑cell trucks, 20 refuelling stations, production sites and a leasing subsidiary to stitch it all together. On its website it says it will lease heavy‑duty trucks with fast refuelling, long range and turnkey support from day one. But announcements are not evidence. The leasing arm has no track record beyond a handful of pilot units. The first heavy‑duty station only just opened, and the broader network does not yet exist. A $337 million loan from a federal bank underwrites the dream, but traction on the ground is still limited to concept and photo ops. This reads like another chapter in the subsidy playbook, big promises built on borrowed money with uncertain follow‑through and no guarantee public money will translate into miles hauled rather than promotional slides.

The open question is whether Hyroad’s newly acquired fleet will actually run freight at scale or become an expensive backdrop for press events and pilot programs. Hydrogen fueling networks in the United States remain patchy, especially outside California. Maintenance for hydrogen trucks is specialized and costly. Competing battery-electric trucks are moving ahead quickly, with lower fuel costs, simpler drivetrains, and rapidly expanding charging infrastructure. Unless Hyroad has contracts in place to keep these trucks hauling and stations fueling, they risk owning a static fleet of depreciating assets that only earn their keep when paired with the next round of public funding.

Nikola’s collapse and the sale of its fleet are not isolated events. They join a growing list of hydrogen mobility ventures that have failed to transition from subsidized demonstration to self-sustaining operations. The reason is not just poor management. It is the mismatch between hydrogen’s real-world economics and the political sales pitches that secure initial funding. Without structural cost reductions in fuel production, distribution, and vehicle maintenance, these programs will continue to live or die on the availability of grants rather than the competitiveness of the service.

The Hyroad-Nikola story is a reminder that the most valuable skill in this sector may not be building low-emission freight solutions but mastering the conversion of taxpayer enthusiasm into private balance sheet gains. Real decarbonization comes from technologies that can survive without endless injections of public money. Flipping distressed assets at auction and wrapping them in the language of fleet transformation does not change that reality.