Cummins Confidential : Is HydroJen Finally On Gardening Leave?

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TCAP asked whether Jennifer Rumsey would pay for Cummins’ hydrogen wreck. Days later, Cummins put her in a garden. Fifty trees. A shovel. A camera. A diesel giant trying to pass off laughable reputational garnish as community virtue.

We asked whether HydroJen would pay.

Cummins answered with gardening.

There she is: Jennifer Rumsey, Chair and CEO of Cummins, shovel-adjacent and community-ready at an Arbor Day tree-planting event in Indianapolis, just days after TCAP asked whether accountability would ever reach the executive suite.

So no, this is not gardening leave.

It is not resignation. It is not clawback. It is not a public reckoning over Accelera, fuel cells, electrolyser pain, write-downs, retreat, and the expensive little bonfire of future-facing ambition.

It is Arbor Day PR.

A hi-vis vest. A little tree. A photo opportunity soft enough to spread on toast.

Cummins says employees joined Pacers Sports & Entertainment, the Arbor Day Foundation and Keep Indianapolis Beautiful to plant more than 50 native trees in the College Park neighbourhood of northwest Indianapolis. The company says urban trees help filter air pollutants, intercept stormwater and cool streets.

All true. Trees are good. Shade is good. Cleaner air is good. Nobody at TCAP is anti-tree, despite Oscar’s occasional decision to water them unconventionally.

But this is Cummins.

Fifty trees is not climate leadership. It is laughable reputational garnish. Not even one tree for every billion dollars of Cummins’ market cap. Trading Economics puts Cummins’ market capitalisation at about $97.61 billion in May 2026, which means this grand moral forest works out at roughly one sapling for every $1.95 billion of corporate value.

A tiny green sprig on a plate of diesel sleaze.

629,950 To Go

If Cummins wanted symbolism, 630,000 trees would have been a better start.

One for every model year 2013-2019 Ram 2500 and 3500 vehicle the US government says Cummins allegedly equipped with illegal software defeat devices.

They planted more than 50.

So let’s call it 50 for the humiliation maths.

That leaves 629,950 to go before Cummins has even planted one tree for every dirty Ram in the defeat-device scandal.

And that is before the roughly 330,000 later Ram vehicles the government said involved undisclosed auxiliary emission control devices.

So yes, congratulations to Cummins on the Arbor Day photo shoot.

Only a few billion trees short if they want one for each dollar it cost. Or just don’t plant any, the equivalent of one for every individual held to account.

Grab another shovel, Jen. Or don’t.

The Shovel Sermon

Cummins quotes Rumsey talking about roots in Indiana, the health of the company, and the health of communities.

Of course it does.

That is the kind of quote corporate affairs departments keep in a locked cabinet marked “break glass in case of environmental optics”.

Roots. Community. Health. Cleaner air. Long-term wellbeing. Employees and partners coming together. All the soft words arranged around a tree like little stones around a grave.

But if Cummins wants to talk about the health of its communities, TCAP has questions.

What does community health look like after the emissions cheating scandal? What does it look like around Cummins’ customer ecosystem, from coal mines to data centres, defence vessels to troubled hospitals, shareholder sanctimony to industrial greenwash?

What does it look like when the same company that wants credit for cleaner air also keeps selling the hardware that helps high-emitting systems remain reliable, serviceable and profitable?

Cummins keeps trying to make the public stare at the nice part.

TCAP is looking at the whole body, while Rumsey stands there less CEO than corporate mascot doing light gardening for the cameras.

Maybe this really is gardening leave.

If so, finally, some growth at Cummins.

America250, Sponsored By Mulch

Cummins also ties the event to America250, through the America Gives initiative.

Fine. Community service is good. Volunteering is good. People showing up to do something useful is good. A neighbourhood getting trees is good.

The staging is something else.

America Gives puts the whole thing inside the United States’ 250th anniversary feel-good machine: service, community, national renewal, civic duty, all the nice words lined up and hosed down for the camera.

So the saplings are not just saplings. They become props in a national service campaign. The diesel giant gets to stand in the sunlight, invoke America’s 250th birthday, nod solemnly towards local wellbeing, and pretend the whole thing smells like civic virtue instead of mulch, marketing and a board-approved photo opportunity.

That is the trick.

Find the softest possible image. Trees. Volunteers. Local partners. A neighbourhood. A national anniversary. Add the CEO. Add branded flags. Add the line about helping communities grow one tree at a time.

Then keep the generator room out of frame.

Keep the mine out of frame.

Keep the exhaust history out of frame.

Keep the busted hydrogen dream out of frame.

Show the tree.

The tree never asks awkward questions.

A Shovel, But No Reckoning

While Rumsey is fucking about with a shovel, the real holes remain untouched.

No apology for the Ram emissions scandal.

No proper public reckoning over the defeat-device legacy.

No serious explanation for Cummins’ hydrogen embarrassment, the Accelera retreat, the fuel-cell sell-off, the write-downs, and the expensive collapse of all that future-facing theatre.

Just a tree.

Just a camera.

Just another Cummins press release trying to bury the smell under mulch.

And you do wonder how many trees Cummins diesel fumes choked in the time it took to stage this little routine.

Maybe that is why the board sent her out with a shovel.

Not to plant a sapling.

But to dig her own grave.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Sources

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