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

To: Kayaker who wrote (2309)	4/10/1998 4:56:00 PM
From: michael a. rowe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5827

Thats the most compelling reason not to listen to Sid's anti-ballard thoughts. Apparently, according to Sid himself he is never wrong, and when you point out some of his misrepresentations of fact....he just ignores them. I, like all "sane" people admit to many mistakes. Do "we" have the time it would take to go through all his posts again and point out he was wrong on many occasions....I dont think so. mike

To: Kayaker who wrote (2309)	4/10/1998 10:51:00 PM
From: Sid Turtlman	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5827

Bob: Re: Mistake #1. Ballard fans love to compare an as yet nonexistent commercial fuel cell powered car, supposedly to be on the road in 2004, with real cars on the road today, and sure enough, the imaginary car is always better. The Prius hybrid gets 66 mpg today. Several car generations from now in 2004, when the first fc powered cars hit the road, the Prius will probably be much better, having learned from 6 years of real life experience. Its emissions are already extremely low. FC cars running on hydrogen have zero emissions, but until there is a hydrogen infrastructure, they will have to reform gasoline or methanol, generating plenty of emissions. I'm not a chemist and can't tell you how much, but it is far from clear that the results will be better than what a gas/electric hybrid like the Prius will be able to do then. re: Mistake #2. Even if we can accept the fanciful projections about an imaginary car in Wired Magazine as being true, the numbers still don't add up. On a BTU basis, methanol is twice as expensive as gasoline, because the process of making it is so energy intensive. So a fc powered car using methanol that is 2.5 times as efficient as a conventional i.c.e. car using gasoline actually delivers very minimal dollar savings to the user, because the higher cost of the fuel counters the higher efficiency. And that assumes that, despite the threat of fuel cells, makers of i.c. engines make no improvements in their efficiency between now and 2004. Plus, the fc engine will cost many times that of an i.c.e., taking away whatever marginal benefits the better mileage provides, and setting up a methanol distribution system, converting gas stations, etc., doesn't come for free. In other words, if they are actually introduced in 2004, which I doubt, fc powered cars will offer so little benefit that no one will buy them unless they are heavily subsidized. Good luck.