There are three long running supporting cast members in stagings of the sad farce that is trials of hydrogen for fleets, FuelCell Energy, Plug Power and Ballard Power Systems. All of their market capitalizations peaked roughly 99% above their current stock valuations in 2000. They’ve all participated in innumerable hydrogen fleet trials, yet none of the trials has resulted in hundreds or thousands of vehicles operating on hydrogen. Quite the opposite, most have resulted in hydrogen being abandoned entirely.
Odyssey of the Hydrogen Fleet infographic by Michael Barnard, Chief Strategist, TFIE Strategy Inc, icons by ChatGPT & DALL-E
Odyssey of the Hydrogen Fleet infographic by Michael Barnard, Chief Strategist, TFIE Strategy Inc, icons by ChatGPT & DALL-E
It was a sufficiently robust pattern that I had fun writing a notional, six-part play around the theme, the stages being so clear and the hydrogen chorus so pervasive early yet completely silent later. I’ve written a couple of articleson examples of the play being staged in Iceland, Canada, France, Germany, India, Austria and the USA, sometimes multiple times in a single country.
Today a publicist tried to interest me in a ‘win’ by one of the three firms, and that led me to ask “In addition to the Whistler, BC failure, where else have Ballard fuel cells been involved in failed trials since 2000”? The list is long. This is probably not an exhaustive list of their failures, but it does answer one question and beg another.
While 2000 is 24 years ago now, Ballard was formed long before that in 1979. Ironically, originally it was formed to research and find applications for lithium batteries, but abandoned that for fuel cells in 1989. Yes, Ballard is actually a 44 year old company that pivoted away from a technology that has come to dominate transportation and aspects of energy. It went public in 1993, making it a 30 year old publicly listed corporation.
Comparison of Plug Power, Ballard and Fuel Cell Energy stocks snce the first one came on the scene from Google
Comparison of Plug Power, Ballard and Fuel Cell Energy stocks since the first one came on the scene from Google
It was a hot stock in the late 1990s, but peaked early 2000, and never remotely recovered. Yet it keeps limping on, never actually succeeding or being put out of its misery. So let’s look at the litany of an absurd number of tiny trials that never led to successful growth.
In 2000, Ballard and the city of Chicago concluded a two year trial of three buses. Similarly, the City of Vancouver trial of three Ballard powered buses concluded that year. The City of Ottawa looked at those two trials and concluded that they were much more expensive, covered much less ground, had very high fuel costs, required constant maintenance and decided to ignore them. After trialing hydrogen buses, Chicago abandoned the idea, never trialed them again and is currently buying battery electric buses. Similarly, the City of Vancouver ignored hydrogen bues as well.
In 2001, Ballard concluded a hydrogen bus trial with the SunLine Transit Agency of Thousand Palms, CA, which serves Coachella, which might be telling. They naturally claimed it was a stunning success. The agency did too, but mostly because of the visibility it brought them. The final report has pages of parts replaced and road calls for a single bus for a single year. SunLine, having built a single hydrogen refueling station and existing in a state with an odd obsession with hydrogen, has continued to harvest governmental largesse to the tune of, most recently, $7,819,257, for hydrogen trials and upgrading the station. The fleet still has several fuel cell buses with Ballard fuel cells in them, making it possibly the longest lasting fleet. However, that last governmental grant was matched with equivalent funding to buy battery electric buses and install charging infrastructure, so it seems as if the Odyssey is entering its final stages.
The same year, Ballard also managedto convince a Japanese sewage plant to try it out, shipping a 250 kW fuel cell to be run off biomethane. By 2004 it was history.
In 2002, Coleman Powermate Inc launched a fuel cell generator incorporating Ballard’s technology, per SEC filings by Ballard. The $8,000 USD device had sufficient juice to power a computer, phone, fax, and light for 8 to 10 hours before refueling, which is to say a ludicrously small amount of energy for a very expensive price. It sank without a trace, with no record of anyone buying a unit. Ballard bought a couple of tiny firms and Alstom’s fuel cell business in 2002 as well.
2003 saw a trial of a Ballard fuel cell as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). There’s no indication that the UPS firm, MGE, bothered to move forward, and current MGE UPS devices don’t have fuel cells.
That year also saw the launch of the London trial of three fuel cell buses, under the EU and UK government funded CUTE and HyFleet. Ballard claims this as a big win as London has expnded its total fleet of hydrogen buses to 20. Meanwhile, London has 8,600 buses and about a thousand of them are battery electric, with hundreds more battery electric buses on order from several vendors including BYD. The London trial is one of those limping along hydrogen ‘success’ stories that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as well, with the hydrogen fleet a rounding error compared to battery electric vehicles.
As the London transit organizations’ own reports point out, there is 99% to 100% success rate covering routes with a combination of depot and opportunity charging along journeys for battery electric vehicles, with only a 92% success rate for routes with hydrogen buses which can only be fueled at depots. The report also points out that hydrogen buses are much more expensive to fuel and maintain than battery electric buses which are already at cost parity with diesel buses due to lower maintenance and fuel costs. They were also worse than diesel for CO2e emissions with hydrogen fom steam reformation of natural gas, and of course worse than battery electric if electrolysis was used in any event. It’s unclear why London persists with hydrogen when it has so clearly failed to deliver.
2005 saw delivery of five Ford cars with Ballard fuel cells in them to the BC government as part of a multi-year, $8.7 million trial of the vehicles. No final report on that trial seems to be available, and the government certainly doesn’t have a fleet of fuel cell cars today. Sank without a trace, taking the millions with it.
Also in 2005, Ballard delivered the first fuel cells for forklifts which eventually ended up in Walmart distribution centers, where there is a tiny amount of merit in their use in indoor spaces to displace natural gas, diesel and lead acid battery forklifts. Early deployments of forklifts in Walmart and other distribution centers were funded by the US DOE to the tune of about $1.3 million per forklift. There are about 40,000 hydrogen fuel cell forklifts in peration compared to 1.3 million battery electric and 800,000 internal combustion forklifts sold in 2021 alone globally.
Hydrogen fuel cell forklifts remain a rounding error niche that’s heavily promoted by the US DOE as a big win in their hydrogen for energy presentations, although they are spending less direct money on them now. It’s worth noting that the hydrogen for the few forklifts in operation is black or gray hydrogen, not green hydrogen. Other countries have a few hundred here and there. Toyota, US firm Hyster and Hyundai have offerings, but the Toyota and Hyundai ones are mostly demonstration units, with South Korea deploying one test unit this year.
While touted as a big hydrogen win, the reality is that the forklift market has chosen lithium ion batteries as the energy carrier of the future and hydrogen forklifts exist only in legacy firms which were initially funded by the US DOE or governmental agencies in Europe, Japan or South Korea.
In 2006, Ballard managed to sell ore fuel cells for forklifts. It’s worth noting that it sold them to General Hydrogen of BC, which was also founded by Ballard co-founders, so undoubtedly both firms claimed a big win instead of a little family trade of money.
In 2007, Ballard sold its automotive fuel cell division and assets to Daimler and Ford. Daimler took that and has managed to lease 60 entire cars to people on three continents since. Ford built 30 entire cars with fuel cells. Neither commercialized fuel cell cars.
In 2008, Ballard signed a deal with North America’s largest bus manufacturer, New Flyer, to be the exclusive supplier of fuel cells for a proposed line of hydrogen powered shuttle buses. There’s no evidence New Flyer introduced that product.
Also that year, Ballard signed a deal with Plug Power — note stock price chart above — for more fuel cells for forklift power trains Plug Power was selling.
In 2009, Ballard introduced fuel cell back up systems for telecommunications. They still list the producton their site, but have no customer testimonials or references. Presumably they’ve sold a few here and there, with one announcement about a sale in India, sufficient to keep the product limping along. The UPS market is dominated by lithium ion batteries of course, with fuel cell UPS’ being a rounding error.
In 2010, Ballard fuel cells were put, with great fanfare, in 20 buses in Whistler for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The hydrogen was at least ‘green’, in that it was made with hydroelectricity, but unfortunately that was Quebec hydro and the hydrogen was trucked across the country in 9,000 km round trip journeys, with each truck load likely enabling about 10,000 km of bus journey. The bus fleet, in addition to very expensive hydrogen, had innumerable problems including freezing in the relatively mild Whistler winters, and hydrogen was abandoned entirely for buses in the province.
In 2011, Ballard provided five fuel cell modules for a hydrogen bus trial in Norway. Those buses managed t make it into service in 2013, operated for a couple of years and were abandoned. Oslo is acquiring hundreds of electric buses with the target of being fully battery electric by the end of 2023, something that they almost achieved.
In 2012, Ballard sold a fuel cell power system to Toyota’s California sales and marketing headquarters. California, of course, paid for it. There is no public record of any other sales, although they were delivering a few fuel cells to Norway and London based on previous sales, and presumably trying to keep the Whistler buses operating.
It also bought a small backup system company, Idatec, which turned methanol into hydrogen for use in fuel cells. Methanol, of course, is a wood alcohol made entirely from fossil fuels with each kilogram of methanol having a carbon debt of two kilograms of CO2, on average. By stripping the carbon out of the methanol, more CO2 is emitted as well as throwing away 45% of the energy in the liquid and then putting it through a ful cell which is 50% efficient. Methanol to hydrogen to fuel cells is a completely non-virtuous pathway that’s higher emissions than just burning diesel in generators, as well as being much more expensive.
In 2013, Ballard claimed the 500th sale of its methanol to hydrogen to fuel cell product, based on Idatec’s previous sales.
Also that year, Ballard announced a deal to supply Volkswagen with fuel cells for its hydrogen HyMotion demonstrators, something VW had been showing off at trade shows globally for years. VW never introduced a hydrogen fuel cell car for sale or lease, and clearly stated this year that they would never do so.
In 2014, Ballard renewed its Plug Power forklift deal.
They also announced that they would be powering 27 hydrogen buses manufactured by European bus firm Van Hool. The five abandoned Oslo buses were among them. Cologne in Germany had two, and Cologne remains an odd holdout for hydrogen buses, with 52 of them from different manufacturers. Of course, Colone is in Germany’s industrial heartland with many automotive and petrochemical firms, so has a strong predisposition locally to molecules for energy. It’s going to be one of the leave behind regions unless it gets its head out of hydrogen for everything. All of Cologne’s buses have Ballard fuel cells in them, so 52 fuel cells in a decade makes them one of the firm’s biggest customers.
San Remo, Italy picked up five buses, funded by the government through FCH-JU under grand agreement 278192. Of course, San Remo realized the folly of its ways and is revamping its electric trolley buses with new battery electric buses. There’s no evidence that the hydrogen buses are still in operation.
Flanders, Belgium picked up five of the buses. Of course, it’s just down the road from the Van Hool headquarters in Koningshooikt. Despite that, the Flanders transit agency De Lijn is very clear on its website that all buses and trams will be battery electric or running on overhead wires, with nary a menton of hydrogen.
Finally, Aberdeen, Scotland was to have received 10 hydrogen buses with Ballard fuel cells. As a reminder, Aberdeen is a major North Sea fossil fuel industrial hub, although it’s struggling through the low-carbon transition with extensive offshore wind work and a lot of people hoping desperately for both undersea carbon capture and more gas exploration. Big on molecules for energy, in other words, although with a bunch of people, including many I’ve spoken with in the past couple of years, working on the transition.
What that means is lots of governmental funding for hydrogen bus dead ends. Although it looks as if the Van Hool hydrogen buses are long gone, the Aberdeen transit organization still has 25 double decker hydrogen buses manufactured by Irish firm Wright Buses. Of course, it also has 24 electric buses, and the hydrogen buses are running on gray hydrogen. Once more expensive low-carbon hydrogen is required and governmental money runs out, the hydrogen fleet ill be mothballed. That’s just a matter of time. For now, the fuel cells in Aberdeen’s buses still seem to be coming from Ballard, making it Ballard’s second biggest customer up until this point.
From 27 hydrogen buses with Ballard fuel cells to 77 buses in only 11 years. Meanwhile, there thousands of electric buses being delivered in Europe each year. Ballard’s European fuel cell buses remain a rounding error.
In 2015, Ballard inked a deal for another single MW power system to be installed at a sodium chlorate chemical plant in Bordeaux, France which generates hydrogen as a by product of its chemical processes. Naturally the tab was picked up by the government and a French hydrogen production concern. The firm which took the fuel cell, AkzoNobel had done this before in 2005, and has its own fuel cell firm, Nedstack, so it’s not looking like a solid win for Ballard.