Ballard [Nasdaq: BLDP] is quietly moving forward with forging new alliances around the world. Or, more specifically, the company is building prototypes that are sure to lead to joint ventures and partnerships to commercialize stacks and modules and components for parts suppliers. I previously covered Ballard’s business relationship with Mahle. Now, Ballard has teamed up with compressor manufacturer Chart Industries, as well as Linamar, a Canadian automotive supplier with sales of USD 7.5 billion and over 26,000 employees. The aim of Ballard’s partnership with Linamar is to develop fuel cell powertrains for light commercial vehicles weighing up to 5 tons and for SUVs, and maybe other kinds of passenger cars in the future. Ballard might even consider forming a joint venture with a company such as Honeywell, to which the fuel cell maker sold its former subsidiary Protonex’ fuel cell drone program – but not before indicating plans for some type of future collaboration.
There has been a stark rise in the valuation of the business from around USD 100 million to now over USD 9 billion, with the stock price increasing from USD 1 – USD 2 to USD 29. I would go so far as to call it totally excessive. I got early wind of FuelCell Energy [Nasdaq: FCEL] as a turnaround after a management consultancy had “cleaned it up” and after the company had undergone a period of refinancing and restructuring and happily onboarded Orion Energy Partners as a key investor.
Since the beginning of the year, the fuel cell stocks covered in this issue had seen a fast uptrend, which ended with the spread of Covid-19 around the world. Fears over the impact of the disease on the global economy meant some gains were quickly lost. Still, in light of increased news coverage, multiple project announcements and the growing popularity of green hydrogen, it has become clear that hydrogen and fuel cells are entering the mainstream and their breakthrough into the market is approaching rapidly.
The momentum for the fuel cell is constantly improving with increasing dynamics. Recent co-operations such as those between Bosch and PowerCell, but also positive statements on fuel cells from automobile manufacturers such as Audi are attracting attention. Will China be the driver again, as it was when the batteries were introduced and before that in the field of renewable energies? There, new funding guidelines are about to be introduced, which are intended to favour and strongly promote the fuel cell and the hydrogen infrastructure, while the subsidies for purely battery-operated vehicles will, depending on the radius, be abolished in full or to a large extent.
November 2015 saw the publication of the Fuel Cell Industry Review 2015, including market data and analyses for 2015. Since 2014, a team led by E4tech had contacted fuel cell companies around the globe, aggregated their supply figures and can now show the latest trends in the industry, much as Fuel Cell Today had done before its survey came to a halt. The following will present some excerpts from the review. (more…)
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