STOP THE PRESS - the industry's champion of the fuel cell vehicle WANTS OUT !

According to the Detroit Free Press, Ballard is in talks with Daimler and Ford to sell their long-struggling fuel cell unit. A major reason cited is ". . .the lengthy projected timeline to commercialization and high cost of development".

It's all such a long way from the breathless optimism of the late 1990s, which culminated in the publication of this book Powering the Future: The Ballard Fuel Cell and the Race to Change the World. Whatever race Ballard thought they were in, it looks like they lost some time ago. It speaks volumes as well that just after Honda announces the world's first industrial production run for a fuel cell vehicle, the FCX, Ballard is throwing in the towel. Meanwhile, Ford, which owns an 11.2% stake in Ballard, is in the third year of a test that has put 30 hydrogen fuel cell-powered Focus cars on the road. And apparently, Daimler, which owns an 18.7% stake in Ballard, reportedly intends to mass produce fuel cell vehicles by 2012 to 2015. Even GM, probably the weakest of the big three, aims to develop a cost-competitive hydrogen fuel cell vehicle by 2010.



Some of the early FCX test vehicles were powered by Ballard's Mark902 fuel cell stack, pictured here.

The jury's out on the FCX until we see it on the roads. But I suspect that the main culprits for the demise  of the  fuel cell  making it  into our driveways since Ballard entered the scene, are the unanticipated  success and relatively low cost of hybrids like the Prius, major advances in electrical batteries and above all, big auto firms biting off more than they could chew in trying to completely replace the internal combustion engine - over 100 years in development and still going very strong.

Still, in toiling so long on fuel cell development, Ballard can point to having done a lot of the hard work for everyone else.