Steve: I don't think you can buy a copy on the stands; I have a friend who subscribes, and he lent me his copy to look at.
There was no more detail about the nature of the problems than what I posted. In fact, the article noted Ballard's secrecy: "The engines will also be 'reconfigured' to make testing and servicing easier, he [the Ballard spokesman] added. The spokesman would not say exactly what components would be changed: 'We're not going to give information to competitors,' as he put it."
That last comment was kind of funny, when you think of it. Other companies at the fuel cell conference were giving papers with extravagant detail about their various fuel cell demonstrations and tests, and Ballard is too afraid of competitors to say even in general terms what it is working on.
Notice the contradiction? Ballard has close to a $3 billion market cap because it supposedly has this insurmountable lead in fuel cells, because it is the Intel (or is it MSFT? I forget) of the next century, blah, blah, blah, and yet it feels too threatened to let out a little generic information that would mean nothing if it had even a slight lead.
I would say that someone not caught up in the Ballard cult might conclude that, notwithstanding the company's tremendous prowess at doing big deals at the corporate level, that PEM fuel cell technology is proving to be less robust than promised, and that Ballard's lead, if it even exists, is much less than people think.
Judging from all the companies at the conference now doing work on PEM, it seems to be a fairly easy entry technology. That would explain Ballard's excessive secrecy (well, that and the desire to keep shareholders dumb and happy).
What should the market cap be for a company with a marginal lead in a questionable technology, still a good 10 years away from its first operational black ink? I don't know, but I think a lot less than $3 billion.
PS. Sorry to all for the typo's in my last post. I hate doing that. |
