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

To: Derrick P. who wrote (3068)	9/6/1998 3:44:00 PM
From: Urlman	Respond to of 5827

>>>..ECOSTAR EXPLORES FUEL CELLS - While Volvo, Chrysler, Mitsubishi, General Motors, Toyota and others are active in fuel cell research, a multi-company, international effort is advancing the technology. Ford, Daimler-Benz and Ballard Power Systems unveiled the new name of their joint enterprise, Ecostar Electric Drive Systems Co. Ecostar will be developing advanced electric drive systems for vehicles, as well as stationary power units. Ford has used the name for some of its prototype electric vehicles, most based on trucks or vans. The three companies have invested more than $700 million, with the aim of having fuel-cell powertrains available to support commercialization of fuel-cell vehicles by 2004. Canadian Ballard Power Systems is a leader in the development of proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Fuel cells, which generate electricity from hydrogen and oxygen, have the potential to provide the size, range, roominess and speed of conventional cars and trucks while emitting little more than water vapor into the atmosphere. Fuel cells should cost less, not have the range limitations batteries do, and not have the durability limits and replacement costs of battery packs. Hydrogen fuel, which can be obtained from natural gas or methanol, and oxygen extracted from the air are electrochemically combined in a fuel cell to produce electricity and heat with pure water as the only by-product.<<< source: thecarconnection.com

To: Derrick P. who wrote (3068)	9/7/1998 11:41:00 AM
From: Sid Turtlman	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5827

Derrick: Those were excellent suggestions, but only Yahoo and Amazon have a larger market cap than Ballard. Excite, Lycos, Infoseek and everybody else in the internet world have a smaller market cap than Ballard's present US $1.6 billion. Even Amazon may not be as highly valued as Ballard, when you take into account the fact that Amazon's shareholders will someday get 100% of any profits that it has (if it ever has them) whereas much of Ballard future profits (if it ever has them) will accrue to various joint ventures, of which Ballard owns only minority pieces. Moreover, the various internet companies are reporting rapidly growing revenues at the moment. Some people argue that they might all be profitable today if they all weren't willing to sacrifice current profits to gain market share that they believe will lead to even larger profits later. In a sense, this is where Ballard hopes to be in 2004-2005, with a product on the market that it and its partners are losing big money on, but are willing to subsidize in order for it to gain market share and ultimately achieve the volumes needed for profitability. If an internet company said it was going to supply some partners who might, if they choose to at the time, introduce their first potentially mass market product in 2004, of which the company would get some share, and it had a market cap of $1.6 billion today, then that might be an equivalent situation. Just to save anyone the trouble of pointing out that Ballard hopes to have buses and stationary power units on the market before 2004, my response remains that the bus market is very promising, but way too small (thousands of units, at best tens of thousands of units per year, versus the many hundreds of thousands needed to breakeven in cars), and Ballard's PEM technology is inferior for stationary power applications because of its low efficiency and high cost, compared to higher temperature fuel cells and conventional designs. I suspect you will make good money on your internet shorts, but not because they are overpriced compared to Ballard.