Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Amazon Finds There's Nothing Foolish in Fuel Cells

Its deal with Plug Power shows it's too early to discard hydrogen technology.

April 6, 2017 at 4:18 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Fork in the alternative energy road.
Photographer: Ken James/Bloomberg

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Victims of tech hype should be a bit wary of Elon Musk’s dismissal of hydrogen fuel cells as "fool cells." A figure as iconic in the tech industry, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, appears to disagree.

Amazon has acquired the right to buy 23 percent of Plug Power, a Latham, New York-based company that went public back in 1999, has never made a profit, and was until recently a penny stock. Plug Power shares almost doubled in price immediately after the Amazon announcement: