Hydrogen fuel means cleaner air

I looked into Ballard (BLDP) once. It appeared to be a pump and dump stock, utilizing taxpayer and shareholder monies to enrich its management (Mossadiq Umedaly and Firoz Rasul) with megamillions in salaries and stock options and leaving stockholders with accumulated deficits. I also found they were cozying up to Arnold looking for a piece of the hydrogen highway. Here's some of what I found.

Ballard and the great Fuel $ell $aga

The basic concept for fuel cells was discovered in 1839.
But 164 years later, the alluring prospect of replacing the internal combustion engine with devices that generate electricity from an environmentally benign chemical reaction still lies far in the future.
In the meantime, though, Firoz Rasul found a way to make lots of money from fuel-cell technology. The former head of fuel-cell pioneer Ballard Power Systems Inc. of Burnaby, B.C., who stepped down as CEO last month but remains as chairman, sold or transferred some $30 million worth of Ballard shares to family trusts and charities over the past three years.
During his 15-year tenure as CEO, Rasul was also handsomely compensated in salary and bonuses, managing at least once to appear atop the list of Canada's best-paid CEOs. In 2001, he collected $9.9 million in pay. Rasul's haul in 2002 was $5.9 million. Included in that sum, Ballard said last week, was a tripling in Rasul's bonus because of his success in meeting goals he had set for himself, such as the development of a five-year business plan.
(snip)

Enriching themselves - CEOs often pocket outrageous sums regardless of how company performs
Toronto Star, Apr. 27, 2002

Firoz Rasul heads Ballard Power Systems Inc. of Burnaby, B.C., a developer of fuel cells that has never turned an annual profit. The publicly traded firm has racked up total losses of $196.6 million (Canadian) in the past three years, culminating in a loss of $96.2 million last year alone. Just the same, Rasul last year earned a bonus of $191,314 on top of his salary of $551,248, even as the company was laying off 200 employees in a productivity drive.

Waiting for the revolution
Globe and Mail - Report on Business, January 31, 2003

On June 8, 1993, Geoffrey Ballard unveiled a technology that could change the world, and the world came to watch. Ballard’s B.C. company had built a bus that ran not on fossil fuel, but on the stuff of science fiction: the clean, pure energy of hydrogen fuel cells. Ballard toasted the assembled dignitaries and press with a beverage that was, remarkably, also the single emission from the bus’s tailpipe: water. This was Ballard Power Systems Inc., the company that would take on Big Oil, the company that would eradicate smog, the company that would trademark the phrase “Power to Change the World.” Not wanting to miss the sea change, auto giants Ford and Daimler-Benz bought in. “We expect to sell 100,000 fuel-cell cars by 2004,” one Daimler executive proclaimed in 1997.
“The Next Intel?” headlines asked, and the company repeated them with glee. Firoz Rasul, the Ballard Power CEO who would coax the company’s market cap to top $18 billion, spoke with confidence: “There will be no internal combustion engines left.” The stock soared, the press raved, the profits were coming, the revolution was at hand.
So unless you’re still drinking Ballard’s tailpipe cocktail, it’s bewildering to see the same company these days. Fuel-cell cars on the road? A handful. Profits? Patience, the company counsels. Ballard stock? Tank city.
(snip)
Then, in June of 1993, just as Geoffrey Ballard was showing off the bus project-just as the world heard of an audacious, but seemingly plausible, plan to power automobiles with hydrogen-Rasul took the company public. The stock debuted at $8. The IPO brought Ballard Power Systems $15 million.
It helped that at the time of the IPO, automakers were starting to sweat a 1990 regulation passed by California’s Air Resources Board dictating that by 2003, 10% of cars sold in the state-North America’s largest auto market-would have to be zero-emission.
(snip)
The emboldened company brought in new executives with auto experience. “By the end of 1999, we will be able to produce a commercially viable fuel-cell car,” said Mossadiq Umedaly, a Ballard VP who was a friend of Rasul’s dating back to mountaineering camp in their teens. Rasul said that consumers would be walking into showrooms within 10 years to choose among fuel-cell cars. And he forecast the time frame when his company could turn profitable: 2001 or 2002.

Ballard Pays Higher Bonuses, Salaries.
Electric Vehicle Online Today, April 23, 1999 pNA
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1999 Environmental Information Networks, Inc.

Former chief financial officer of Ballard Power Systems, Inc. Mossadiq Umedaly received $22.5 million when he left the company last year. Other executives have scored big as well, including president and CEO Firoz Rasul who received a bonus that exceeded the company's profit last year.
Umedaly left Ballard last June because of a possible change in control of the company following a 25 percent purchase by Daimler-Benz. Most of his compensation came from exercising stock options. Umedaly picked up $20.96 million from exercising more than 513,000 options to buy Ballard shares. In addition, he received termination payment of more than $1 million, salary of $96,133, a bonus of $449,735 and other annual compensation of $15,676.
Rasul took home a salary of $198,965, a bonus of $833,757, other annual compensation of $16,403 and additional compensation of $13,500. The bonus consisted of $10,182 in cash and $823,575 from a share distribution program that forms the basis for executive bonuses.
However, profit for the fuel cell manufacturing company dropped to $800,000 on one cent per share last year, down from $2 million or four cents per share a year earlier. At the same time, bonuses rose by triple-digit percentages for all of the company's senior executives except Umedaly.
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Hydrogen fuel-cell goals moving closer, industry insiders believe
Steve Mertl, Canadian Press (CP), March 7, 2004

(snip)
Coincidentally, Firoz Rasul, chairman of Ballard Power Systems Ltd., the Vancouver fuel-cell pioneer, this year took over the rotating chairmanship of the California Fuel Cell Partnership, the small but influential business-government coalition that helps set the development agenda globally.
Rasul says he expects to meet with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger next month about beginning the $200-million project, a key piece of infrastructure needed to make fuel cell-powered vehicles practical.

Isn't hydrogen highly volitile?

Yes, but so is gasoline. At least hydrogen is lighter than air, so leaks will dissipate. Gasoline vapor, and liquid for that matter, is heavier than air and will concentrate in low spots.

Watch the film clips of the Hindenberg fire and crash. Notice the flames are all above the structure. Many folks actually survived that inferno, because they were below the majority of the flames.

You sure do know how to pull the swindler's covers, don't you!!! Well done calcowgirl!!!

Schwarzenegger the swindler with his "Hydrogen Highway" pantload!!! Schwartzenegger the swindler with his "Sierra-Nevada CONservancy" pantload!!! Schwartzenegger the swindler with his toothless reforms and massive debt service for future citizens!!!

It's getting harder everyday to see how we benefitted in any way from what started out to be a great, historic Recall in Cauleeforneeah!!!

Solar Roofs and Hydrogen Highways fall in the same category, as far as I'm concerned. Even if they go nowhere, there are some of these scummy companies using every press release to gain traction in their stock price (and of course, there are those benefiting from trading the stock during the pump.) If they can get one positive meeting with a State official, it gives them credibility in the market. If anyone is actually dealing with this guy Rasul, it stinks, IMO.

I'm sure you wouldn't be suprised at some of the connections of the beneficial shareholders of some of these Green companies to our great State leaders.

Not at all!!! Good nite and have another fantastic week in CA bondage!!!

My brohter in law is a chemist, and he tells me that getting it from natural gas yields a bi-product of CO2.

I am a chemist and your brother-in-law is correct. In addition, the process of "extracting" hydrogen from natural gas wastes most of the energy pontential inherent to natural gas. It also requires energy from some other source to accomplish this stupid process. It's dumber than the ethanol scam, but don't get me started, it's bedtime.

Maybe the electrolysis of water with electricity from tidal power generation would do the job.

Sound of two gasoline powered cars crashing together.

Crunch. Tingle.

Sound of two hydrogen powered cars crashing together.

KaBOOM

Corn ethanol research is funded because the farmers are a powerful lobby, not because it makes sense to grow corn for energy.

That's what I thought, too, but I was too lazy to google it.

tidal power generation

That's another one that was supposed to be viable by now, isn't it?

Lets also remember that fuel cell powered cars currently cost around $1million a piece (though Toyota hopes to cut that down to $50k in 10 years).

Doesn't matter. The easiest way to get hydrogen for hydrogen cars is to crack it out of gasoline.