Ballard Power -world leader zero-emission PEM fuel cells Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Ballard Power -world leader zero-emission PEM fuel cells

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To: peter dumbrille who wrote (681)	5/20/1997 11:15:00 PM
From: Sid Turtlman	of 5827

Peter: I didn't make up the eight years out of thin air (unlike all the other stuff I have written here - just kidding!) In the press conference when the Ballard - Daimler deal was announced, the Daimler guy said that he hoped that the first cars would be produced in eight years. My suspicion is that the first profits to Ballard would come some years after that - few new products start out in the black - it takes a lot of advertising to educate the consumer on the benefits, and a lot of production before all the manufacturing kinks get ironed out. True, there may be some Ballard powered buses on the road before then, but that is a tiny market - only about 4000 purchased per year in North America, I think (or something on that order.) Most transit authorities are perpetually broke, unfortunately. Ballard's other chance to make money before eight years would be stationary (utility) power. I don't want to repeat arguments I made in previous notes (I will look them up and refer you to them if you are really curious about this) but I think PEM type fuel cells have very, very little chance of succeeding in this application. The expense of starting with natural gas and creating a clean enough (in terms of carbon monoxide ppm) flow of pure hydrogen that PEM cells require is so high, using any known technology, that even if Ballard could produce the fuel cell element for a cost of zero the total cost of the entire plant would be way too high for it to be a competitive product. Hence, eight years. On the other hand, might Ballard go up, say, six years from now, in anticipation of the Mercedes product introduction being only two years away? Of course it might.

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