Hawkeye: You say you "DON'T CARE" who I am, but that is virtually all your post concerns. When you have something to say about Ballard (perhaps when your issue of H&FC Letter arrives) please feel free to do so.
I find it a waste of time to speculate who is who on SI and who has what position. I could tell you my position, where I live, and anything else you might want to know, but there would be no reason for you to believe me, so why bother? As to ERC, you are the one who keeps bringing it up here, not me. In any event, ERC doesn't (to my knowledge) have any interest in fuel cells for buses or cars. I am a long term holder of its stock, and will gladly admit that I wish it had even one tenth of Ballard's present market cap, but have long since given up any hope that talking about it here would do any good. (The DCHT contingent hasn't figured that out yet.)
Discussion of ERC doesn't belong on this thread; you regularly bring it up to try to taunt me because of its uninspiring stock performance, rather than to discuss Ballard issues. Please stick to the latter here, and insult ERC over on its own thread if that sort of thing makes you feel better.
As to my posting here at all, it wouldn't have been necessary had Ballard been as forthcoming about its technical failures as it has been about its marketing and corporate alliance successes. Had the company said something in July when the buses were pulled off the route so soon after the start of the test, there would have been nothing for the H&FC letter to expose, and nothing for me to post from that letter.
IMO there is no reason to think that the Chicago problem is a fatal flaw. My point that it does involve the fc power plant was only to counter posted assertions that the fuel cells were fine and this had something to do with badly constructed buses.
Unless the company is attempting some contradiction of basic laws of physics and chemistry, the problem will eventually be fixed. Maybe the buses will go back in service in February on schedule and run perfectly. I am not saying that won't happen.
This is just a dose of reality - fuel cells for vehicles are in a very primitive state compared to what they must be to be a technical and commercial success. The hard stuff is really toward the end, after the vehicles work well running on hydrogen, and after tiny, efficient onboard reformers that can deliver the right amount of hydrogen at the right purity and temperature are created.
After it works perfectly, cutting the costs of the power plant in half, then in half again, then again, etc., to get it close to the price/performance of conventional and hybrid vehicles available to consumers at that time -- THAT will be the tough part.
This is a long journey that Ballard is on. It may eventually reach its destination, and the bus problem may later be viewed as just a slight stumble coming out of the starting gate. While probably not a fatal flaw, this stumble so early may well have some implications as to WHEN the company reaches its destination. |
