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Gold/Mining/Energy : Global Thermoelectric - SOFC Fuel cells (GLE:TSE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ddl who wrote (5789)	11/21/2002 11:58:09 AM
From: Gulo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6016

ddl. First of all, I don't think you're bashing. I think you are simply expressing your concerns as you see them. You see it differently than I, but that is natural. We have different experiences here, each of which may affect our judgement. You got burned because the company did not meet your (and apparently the market's) expectations. A few years ago, I got lucky when the market decided they loved GLE while I had a bunch of warrants. I think my pleasant experience, along with the fact that I avoided the fuel cell bubble, may bias me favourably now. Your unpleasant experience as a result of the bursting of that bubble may bias you negatively. Who can know their own biases? The best we can do is to discuss evidence supporting and contradicting our current opinions and evolve those opinions accordingly. Here is my "evidence" against the "evidence" in your post. We are prototyping residential units We are designing hi-volume production processes We chose Dana because they can help us meet consumer demand We will have an agreement shortly. Each one of these is true: 1) GLE is protoyping residential units and have been doing so for a couple of years. They are now on their 5th generation residential unit prototype. I did not take this to mean they have units in residences. Did you? 2) GLE has designed and partially implemented hi-volume production processes. I don't know if you were ever involved in manufacturing design, but I know the this stage could take years. They damn well better have been in the design stage by now if they expect to be ready to produce in volume when their design has met commercialization objectives. Again that does not mean they are in volume production now. 3,4)Dana was hired to help reduce costs of production. They did that, and continue to do that. From the Dana website dana.com : Dana’s first steps toward becoming a supplier of fuel cell components will be in the proton electrolyte membrane (PEM) and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) for residential and industrial markets. Fuel cell systems for these markets will tolerate a significantly higher dollar-per-kilowatt and are expected to be available for the general market in limited quantities by 2005. Significant reductions in cost, durability, and fuel infrastructure – as well as public acceptance – are among the issues now being addressed. I don't know what the definitive agreement looks like or if even if Dana is still involved with Global, but it is curious that both companies simultaneously revised their timelines to 2005 for commercialization. From Global's Aug. 15 release: A new generation stack design ("Gen5"), currently being tested, has also initially indicated a service life of 15,000 hours. More importantly, this stack design has proved more resilient to thermal cycling, facilitating the warm-up and cool-down of the stack associated with "on/off" operation. Furthermore, this stack design can be manufactured with 70% less cost than that associated with the Company's Gen4 stack. That sounds like progress. I haven't found a single material element in any of GLE's news releases or web publications that suggests that they have tried to mislead anyone about anything. They have been optimistic about timelines, but that is the nature of the beast. What other SOFC company has kept as close to predicted timelines as GLE? -g