Hydrogenics Brand Guidelines: The Mississauga Electrolyser Maker Absorbed by Cummins

A Canadian hydrogen company built by acquisition.

Hydrogenics is a Canadian name in hydrogen: a maker of water electrolysers and fuel cell systems based in Mississauga, Ontario, which since 2019 has belonged to the American engine maker Cummins. Its corporate start was an unusual one. English Wikipedia says the company was incorporated in 1988 under the name Traduction Militech Translation Inc., changed its name to Hydrogenics Corporation on 20 August 1990, and entered the business of fuel cell technology development in August 1995.

It grew by buying other firms. Wikipedia lists EnKAT GmbH in 2002, which became its European division; Greenlight Power Technologies, a fuel cell testing business, in 2003; and Stuart Energy, a maker of hydrogen generators based on alkaline electrolysis, in 2004. In 2007, Wikipedia says, Hydrogenics left the fuel cell testing business to concentrate on power for forklifts and on backup power.

The result was a company in two halves. Wikipedia describes an OnSite Generation unit, headquartered at Oevel in Belgium and built on water electrolysis, and a Power Systems unit in Mississauga, built on proton-exchange membrane, or PEM, fuel cells, with a satellite site at Gladbeck in Germany. Hydrogenics was a listed company: its shares traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and on Nasdaq, under the ticker HYGS, until the Cummins purchase, according to a 2019 note by the law firm Gowling WLG and a report in FreightWaves.

HySTAT, HyPM and pipelines.

Its product names were plain and technical. Wikipedia names the HySTAT electrolysers, which split water into hydrogen and oxygen by passing an electric current through a liquid electrolyte and could be installed indoors or outdoors, and the HyPM fuel cell modules, which it says covered outputs from one kilowatt to one megawatt. The company also developed electrolysers based on PEM technology. Accelera, the Cummins brand that now carries that work, lists the HyLYZER 500 and HyLYZER 1000 PEM electrolysers on its website.

Much of Hydrogenics’ public story was told through partnerships rather than through products sold to the public. In April 2012 it and the pipeline company Enbridge announced a joint venture to develop utility-scale energy storage in North America, the Associated Press reported, in a story carried by CBC News: hydrogen made during periods of surplus renewable power would be injected into Enbridge’s natural gas pipeline network, and Enbridge would take an equity stake in Hydrogenics. Wikipedia says Hydrogenics’ power-to-gas facility made its first direct injection of hydrogen into a gas pipeline in June 2013, and that a power-to-gas plant it supplied to the German utility E.ON at Falkenhagen began operating in November of that year.

Transport was the other strand. Wikipedia records a fuel cell bus programme with Natural Resources Canada from 2002, built on a New Flyer transit bus, and a 2015 partnership with the French train maker Alstom to supply fuel cell systems for the Coradia iLint, Alstom’s hydrogen train. In December 2018 the industrial gas group Air Liquide, through its subsidiary the Hydrogen Company, took a stake of about 18.6 percent in Hydrogenics, and the two firms agreed to develop PEM electrolysis for transport together, FreightWaves reported in 2019.

Design and documentation.

Hydrogen and fuel cell companies sell equipment that most people never see in use. An electrolyser splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity; a fuel cell runs the reaction the other way, turning hydrogen into electricity. In the PEM designs made by several firms in this guide, the work happens in stacks of thin membranes and plates, assembled into larger systems that are often delivered in standard shipping containers, painted white or pale grey and lined up in rows at an industrial site.

That makes the sector’s public image a matter of pictures and words more than products. Company websites lean on photographs of factory floors, stacks being assembled, container rows beside wind turbines or refineries, and the vehicles that use the gas: hydrogen buses, delivery vans and, in the warehouse market, fuel-cell forklifts. Products tend to carry short, technical names, and greens and blues, suggesting water, air and renewable power, are a common choice.

The firms differ in what they actually make. Some build electrolysers to produce hydrogen; others build fuel cells to use it; and Plug Power says it covers production, storage, transport and use in one business. Several are listed companies, so their history is told as much in stock-exchange announcements, fundraisings and restructurings as in product launches, and a company’s own claims about capacity or cost should be read as claims.

The industry meets at trade fairs such as Hannover Messe in Germany and the Hydrogen Technology Expo, where stand design, demonstration stacks and project announcements do much of the brand work. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — who founded it, who owns it, where it makes its equipment — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Hydrogenics to Accelera.

The independent company ended in 2019. Cummins announced its purchase of all of Hydrogenics’ outstanding shares on 28 June 2019 and closed the deal on 9 September 2019, FreightWaves reported. Gowling WLG, counsel to Cummins, said in its note on the deal that Cummins would own about 81 percent and Air Liquide about 19 percent, and described Hydrogenics as headquartered in Mississauga. On 30 June 2023 Cummins announced that it had bought Air Liquide’s remaining share and now owned Hydrogenics outright, Truck & Bus Builder reported.

By then the Hydrogenics name had given way to a new one. On 8 March 2023 Cummins renamed its New Power business unit, which covered hydrogen fuel cells, battery power and other technologies, as Accelera by Cummins, the Indianapolis Business Journal reported, to give the unit an identity separate from the diesel engines for which the 104-year-old parent was known; the brand was launched at a Washington, D.C., art museum after a weeks-long teaser campaign of billboards and digital advertising. Accelera’s own website dates the launch to the same day.

The story since has been one of contraction. In February 2026 Cummins reported charges on the electrolyser business within Accelera, following a strategic review it said was “initiated in response to shifts in hydrogen adoption expectations,” and the trade site Hydrogen Central reported that Cummins had decided to halt new commercial activity in electrolysers. On 2 April 2026 Alstom announced that it had acquired Cummins’ hydrogen fuel cell activities dedicated to rail, including the engineering, product and support capabilities used in Alstom’s hydrogen train fleets, with customers in Germany, Italy and France.

For a design guide, Hydrogenics shows how an engineering brand can be absorbed into a parent’s new name: plain product codes, a business told through partners, and finally a place inside Accelera. Compare Cummins, its owner since 2019, and Ballard Power Systems, another Canadian fuel cell company. For this guide we use a deep teal, a slate grey and a pale ice blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Hydrogenics’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.