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Technology Stocks : Ballard Power -world leader zero-emission PEM fuel cells -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TedT who wrote (1403)	12/16/1997 2:43:00 PM
From: Sid Turtlman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5827

TedT: "...you are neglecting to consider that a certain percentage of vehicles are going to mandated to be zero emission as opposed to low emission. A fuel cell using hydrogen will meet this criteria. A hybrid will not." A fuel cell car using hydrogen would have no market unless someone financed a project costing many tens of billions of dollars to convert the world's infrastructure to hydrogen from gasoline. And even that would beg the question of emissions, since the manufacture of hydrogen from natural gas, which is how it is done commercially, creates tons of carbon dioxide. So instead of coming out of a tail pipe it would come out of a smokestack. Fuel cell cars running on methanol would require a significant investment in the infrastructure, but it would be magnitudes less than that required for hydrogen. Gasoline would be ideal, of course. But then the fuel cell cars are no longer zero emission cars, although presumably the smog causing oxides of sulfer and nitrogen would be somewhat lower than from a gas/electric hybrid. Toyota's hybrid car, for sale in Japan now, can already do most of what Ballard/DB/Ford hopes to do seven years from now. If Toyota can show good progress over the next few years, and others jump on board, that would be very bad news for the prospects for fuel cell cars.