Gadgets to lead fuel-cell growth

Gadgets to lead fuel-cell growth
report: Development for small electronics outpaces that for cars and trucks for mass market

CRAIG WONG
CP
Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Consumers will start to see fuel cells in small electronics devices such as notebook computers and cellphones long before the commercial production of cars powered by the environmentally friendly technology, the authors of a new report on the industry say.

John Webster, leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada's fuel cell practice, said small companies and major players like Toshiba, Sanyo, NEC are all working on micro-size fuel cells to be used in a wide variety of applications.
"They're all trying to develop direct methanol fuel cells for use in their devices, so there's a lot of work being done in the area and the conventional view is that in the next two years you're going to begin to see products being introduced," he said in an interview yesterday.
A survey of major public companies involved in fuel cells by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggested that losses among public companies in the sector grew by 20 per cent, while research and development spending increased just two per cent.
But Webster said the survey only captures part of what is going on in the industry and doesn't include much of the development done within large diversified companies or at private firms.
He said the development of fuel cells in small electronics is ahead of that for cars and trucks for the mass market because the economic case is easier to make.
"To match the cost of an internal combustion engine your cost per kilowatt hour has to be down at something like $35 and fuel cells are long way away from that right now," he said.
Alastair Nimmons, co-author of the survey said that as the number of mobile computing devices increases, so will the demand for efficient ways to power them.
"If you think about the amount of power required for that it is not particularly practical today," Nimmons said.
Losses at the 20 companies included in the survey grew to $465 million U.S. from $387 million U.S. in 2003. None of the companies in the 2005 survey was profitable.
Aggregate revenues for public companies in the fuel cell sector dropped four per cent in 2004 to $234 million U.S. from $244 million U.S. in 2003. Research and development expenditures increased by two per cent to $221 U.S. million in 2004.
The top two gross revenue earners in 2004 were Vancouver's Ballard Power Systems at $81 million and FuelCell Energy of Danbury, Conn., at $31 million, who together accounted for 48 per cent of the total revenues of companies in the survey.
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005