Abstract We study ergodic properties of invariant measures for the partially hyperbolic horseshoes, introduced in Díaz et al [Destroying horseshoes via heterodimensional cycles: generating bifurcations inside homoclinic classes. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 29 (2009), 433–474]. These maps have a one-dimensional center direction E c , and are at the boundary of the (uniformly) hyperbolic diffeomorphisms (they are constructed bifurcating hyperbolic horseshoes via heterodimensional cycles). We prove that every ergodic measure is hyperbolic, but the set of Lyapunov exponents in the central direction has gap: all ergodic invariant measures have negative exponent, with the exception of one ergodic measure with positive exponent. As a consequence, we obtain the existence of equilibrium states for any continuous potential. We also prove that there exists a phase transition for the smooth family of potentials given by ϕ t = t log ∣ DF ∣ E c ∣.