Horizon’s Hydrogen Dreams and the Leadership Keeping It From Reality

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Hyzon became a recognizable failure in the hydrogen for energy world, but its parent company, Horizon Fuel Cell, attracted much less attention. Hyzon’s collapse was visible because it entered public markets through a SPAC, made aggressive commercial claims, and then ran into regulatory, financial, and operational problems. Behind that story sat Horizon, which supplied the technology and leadership. The same CEO, Craig Knight, is again promoting hydrogen as an energy carrier even though Hyzon’s failure should have been a decisive signal about the limits of this strategy. This renewed push invites a closer look at Horizon’s real business, its governance, and the strategic logic that keeps steering it toward plays that cannot succeed.

Horizon presents itself as an engineering firm with global ambitions in hydrogen systems, but its only consistent success has come from its educational products. These are classroom kits and demonstration systems aimed at students and hobbyists. The firm even spun off an educational subsidiary, yet still lists similar kits in its main catalogue. That overlap suggests that educational products remain Horizon’s only viable commercial line because they involve tiny, non-production fuel cells, controlled conditions, and customers who value demonstration over industrial performance. It also suggests that Horizon knows where traction exists but will not fully accept that its scalable market lies in education rather than energy.

Outside education, Horizon’s attempts to build a real hydrogen for energy business cluster into four areas. Hyzon’s heavy vehicle push was the most visible and the most costly. Chinese hydrogen bus deployments were another attempt at anchoring hydrogen in transportation. UAV fuel cells were pitched as a high performance alternative to batteries for long endurance drones. Stationary PEM power cabinets were aimed at remote sites where diesel generators and batteries compete today. Each of these plays was presented as a bridge to large commercial markets. None of them delivered that bridge.

Hyzon with Knight as CEO stood out because it tried to make hydrogen trucks a commercial reality in a global freight market that is shifting rapidly to battery electric solutions. The company had to contend with rising expectations, pressure to show orders, and scrutiny from regulators and investors. When statements about deployments, customers, and product readiness were challenged, the consequences fell both on Hyzon and on Knight personally. An engineering firm that sells technology into a public vehicle cannot escape the governance footprint of that vehicle. Hyzon collapsed because hydrogen has poor economics for heavy transport, but it also collapsed because transparency and governance did not match public market requirements. Horizon carried that reputational weight because Hyzon inherited its leadership and core technology. That connection alone should have triggered a reassessment of strategy at Horizon.

In its complaint, the SEC alleged that Hyzon and its senior leadership, including Craig Knight, made public statements that were factually incorrect about the company’s customer relationships and vehicle sales during the SPAC transition period — for example, the allegation that Hyzon sold 87 fuel-cell vehicles in 2021 when, according to the complaint, none had been sold. The agency asserted that Knight described certain entities as committed customers even though no binding agreements existed, and announced vehicle deliveries that the SEC later stated had not occurred. According to the SEC, Knight also referenced a major potential supplier relationship that, at the time of his statements, was not in place in the manner presented to investors. In settling the case, Knight consented to a final judgment that included a personal US $100,000 civil penalty, without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations. Separate investor lawsuits echoed the SEC’s claims, alleging that Knight’s public statements about Hyzon’s commercial progress, order book, and operational readiness were materially misleading because they overstated the status of customer contracts, technology readiness, and near-term revenue potential.

Chinese hydrogen bus pilots provided another test case. These deployments occurred as part of large national programs, but hydrogen buses were always a small slice of the broader bus market. Battery electric buses scaled faster, cut operating costs, and integrated better with existing charging and grid infrastructure. Hydrogen buses required local hydrogen supply chains, high pressure storage, and maintenance capabilities that were expensive even in supportive regions. Horizon participated in this space, but the market itself never justified the scale promised by hydrogen advocates. These bus deployments did not die because of bad engineering. They died because batteries improved at a steady pace, and because city bus operators responded to cost and reliability signals rather than promotional narratives.

China’s bus and heavy-duty fuel-cell vehicle market offers perhaps the strongest proof that hydrogen for energy was always bound to falter. While Beijing and other cities once deployed hundreds of hydrogen buses as policy showcases, in the first nine months of 2025 China’s commercial fuel-cell vehicle sales fell by 45% year-on-year even though China remains the largest market globally. This decline indicates that government support alone did not overcome the fundamental cost disadvantage of hydrogen over electrification. In the case of Beijing’s bus fleet, battery-electric buses increased rapidly and took over the majority of new orders, leaving hydrogen units stranded, under-utilised and often mothballed, along with the hydrogen refueling stations that were supposed to support them. That outcome was not a failure of ambition but a predictable result of hydrogen’s higher logistics cost, poorer infrastructure support, and competition from cheaper solutions.

Horizon’s UAV fuel cell business is often described with admiration for its engineering. These are lightweight PEM systems that extend the flight time of specialized drones. The engineering skill is real, but the market reality is hard to ignore. Battery energy density is improving, battery costs are falling, and UAV platforms are optimizing around batteries because they are simple to integrate and easy to support in the field. Operational environments favor technologies that avoid complex logistics. Hydrogen storage, compression, and refuelling are complex for UAV operators who need fast turnaround, minimal equipment, and predictable performance. Even where long endurance matters, alternative fuels and hybrid systems often meet the need at lower cost. Hydrogen is also failing to gain any ground in aviation more broadly because of its low volumetric energy density and complex handling. Aviation segments that once looked like possible hydrogen niches now lean toward batteries where feasible and biologically sourced sustainable liquid fuels everywhere else. In this context, UAV hydrogen systems are not a foundation for a viable hydrogen for energy strategy. They are a technical accomplishment looking for a market that will keep shrinking.

Remote site PEM power cabinets are another area where Horizon attempted to position hydrogen as a practical energy solution. These systems target back-of-grid or off-grid applications where diesel generators and batteries currently dominate. On paper, hydrogen cabinets offer clean power with fewer moving parts than combustion generators. In practice, there is no way to deliver hydrogen cheaply to these sites, and no way to store it affordably in the required quantities. Batteries paired with solar or small wind installations are cheaper and more reliable, and biodiesel generators require a straightforward supply chain that already exists. Even when customers want lower emissions, they tend to choose hybrids of batteries and generators because these systems integrate into their logistics. A hydrogen PEM cabinet is a dead end in this context because the fuel supply chain is not viable.

A common thread across all four plays is that hydrogen for energy never delivers a competitive value proposition. The failures are not the result of weak engineering. They reflect the fact that hydrogen loses to batteries and direct electrification in almost every energy application. Hydrogen is required as an industrial feedstock, although a declining one, but not for energy.

The other common thread across these four dead-end hydrogen plays is Knight. He served as Horizon’s CEO during the periods when the PEM power cabinet initiative, the UAV fuel-cell line, and the Chinese hydrogen-bus efforts failed to sustain any meaningful commercial traction. He also played a central role in creating Hyzon as a Horizon spin-out and led it through its SPAC merger, serving as the company’s CEO and primary public spokesperson.

This is where Richard Rumelt’s kernel of good strategy becomes important. A good strategy starts with a clear diagnosis. The diagnosis for Horizon should be that hydrogen for energy plays fail because the economics do not work. The guiding policy should be to focus on the only segment Horizon is competent at with a real market fit, which is education. Coherent actions would involve shaping the firm into a transparent, well governed educational and specialized engineering company, not a hydrogen for energy hopeful.

Horizon and Knight have not adopted that kernel. The diagnosis has been replaced with the belief that hydrogen will eventually gain traction as an energy carrier despite repeated evidence to the contrary, and a belief that an educational products company led by a CEO whose regulatory history already raised serious governance questions can deliver a transformative product set in energy. The guiding policy shifts from market to market without acknowledging structural limits. Actions are scattered across plays that share the same economic flaws. A firm that applied Rumelt’s logic would have reevaluated its leadership after the Hyzon collapse and before Knight began promoting hydrogen for energy again.

Governance is difficult to separate from strategy in this case. Knight has faced fines and claims in lawsuits related to statements made during the Hyzon period. SPAC and venture capital cultures both encouraged aggressive growth narratives, but good governance does not excuse repeated issues with representations to investors and regulators. A well governed company would have taken the Hyzon consequences seriously and reconsidered whether Knight should continue leading Horizon. The decision to move forward without change signals a deeper governance problem. When a company stays tied to a leader with this history, it signals a lack of internal accountability.

Hydrogen does have a future as an industrial feedstock. Fertilizer production requires hydrogen. Some chemical processes require hydrogen. A segment of steel production may use hydrogen for direct reduction where electricity, biomethane DRI, molten oxide electrolysis and scrap availability do not solve the problem. Aviation requires biologically sourced sustainable aviation fuels that require hydrogen as a hydrogenation chemical. These are necessary and important applications where low carbon hydrogen helps decarbonize unavoidable demand. They are not pathways to hydrogen becoming an energy carrier.

The energy transition will use low carbon hydrogen in a limited set of industrial applications, and those sectors will have to decarbonize their hydrogen supply. That is a real and durable market, but it is small compared to the global energy system. Building a company around hydrogen for energy requires assumptions that do not align with physics, economics, or observed market behavior. Horizon’s repeated pursuit of these energy plays, combined with its governance decisions, shows a company unwilling to adjust its view of the world.

The clear pattern is that hydrogen for energy has never penciled out, even with policy support. Batteries, direct electrification, and conventional fuels outperform hydrogen in transport, remote power, and UAVs. The UAV space in particular is being shaped by improvements in battery energy density, falling costs, and simpler logistics. Alternative liquid fuels are far easier to manage in aviation than gaseous hydrogen. Batteries and hybrids continue expanding their range of use. Hydrogen’s diminishing role in aviation removes another argument for hydrogen fuel cell UAVs.

Horizon faces growing challenges in attracting investment, securing funding, and pursuing any credible growth path while Knight remains in charge. Investors understand that leadership credibility shapes risk, and Knight’s history with Hyzon has left a record of regulatory findings, contested claims, and fines that raise concerns about oversight and disclosure. These issues matter because hydrogen for energy already struggles to justify capital on its own economics, and adding leadership risk makes institutional investors even more cautious.

Horizon is still privately held, which masks some of these pressures, but private capital is not blind to patterns of overstatement or strategic drift. A company that depends on forward looking narratives about emerging hydrogen markets needs a leader who reinforces trust, not one who comes with governance baggage that public markets have already flagged. Without a change in leadership or a shift toward more grounded strategic planning, Horizon will continue to face skepticism from serious investors, and that skepticism will limit its ability to scale beyond its current tiny niche. Its failure to recognize this means it’s fundamentally not a serious firm. That it’s treated as one despite single digit millions of revenue from tiny products and project revenue after two decades is due to the hydrogen bubble hype.

My hydrogen for transportation death watch tracks firms and technologies that are failing or are at high risk because the underlying economics of hydrogen mobility do not work. Hyzon sits on that list as a clear failure, and Horizon is now on it as a high-risk entry because it continues to anchor its strategy in sectors where hydrogen cannot compete with batteries or liquid fuels. The pivot table of hydrogen for transportation makes this pattern visible because segment after segment shows rising costs, shrinking volumes, and poor competitive positioning against electrification. If Horizon wants to derisk its position, it has to abandon hydrogen for transportation entirely, shut down or wind back its fuel cell mobility ambitions, and focus on market segments where hydrogen demand is unavoidable. That means building a credible business around educational systems, small engineering tools, and a narrow band of industrial applications that do not depend on hydrogen becoming an energy carrier.

Horizon has strengths in educational scale fuel cell manufacturing and in educational products, but it has not built a realistic strategy around those strengths. It continues to chase hydrogen for energy applications that cannot deliver a sustainable business. A strategy based on these plays is not grounded in the reality of the energy transition. It is so poorly governed that its CEO was fined by the SEC in connection with alleged false or misleading statements in investor communications, was in charge of a cratered publicly listed company fined much more by the SEC, has a strong history of fractious interactions with analysts, still continues to advance strategies which don’t pass the most basic empirical tests and yet is still the CEO. Horizon can still choose to become a stable educational and specialized engineering company, but doing so requires an honest diagnosis, strong governance, and leadership that aligns with the markets that actually exist rather than the ones being imagined.

End note: I started looking at Horizon after Knight posted on LinkedIn about the “tremendous” opportunities related to Asian transportation markets—where hydrogen is in significant decline—and data center power opportunities—which are a bubble and where hydrogen is deeply unlikely to be economically viable. Many commenters pointed out the logical fallacies and factual failures in his assertions. His reactions in comments were dismissive, aggressive, often hostile and counter-productive from a public relations perspective. It was a bit of a master class in how to make a firm and its leader look bad. This led me to assess both Horizon and Knight more closely and publish this article, which is kind of the definition of an own goal. More weight on the scale for Horizon to reconsider Knight’s role with the firm.