Geoffrey Ballard (businessman)
Encyclopedia
Geoffrey Ballard, CM
, OBC
(16 October 1932 – 2 August 2008) was a Canadian
geophysicist
and businessman. A long time advocate of replacing the internal combustion engine
, in 1979 Ballard founded what would become Ballard Power Systems
to develop commercial applications of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell
(PEM). Acknowledged worldwide as the father of the fuel cell
industry, Time
named him a "Hero for the Planet" in 1999.
, to Jessie Marguerite Mildred of the Rowntree's
family in York
and Archibald Hall Ballard of Staten Island, New York. His father studied electrochemical engineering at the University of Toronto
and later specialized in the area of radiation. He was working at Carborundum Corporation when the lab director fell overboard from a boat during a party and was washed over Niagara Falls
, so Archibald Ballard was promoted to lab director at a relatively young age in his mid-40s. He spent most of World War II
at Oak Ridge, Tennessee
, working on the atomic bomb.
After high school in Niagara Falls, Ballard attended Queen's University
in Kingston, Ontario
, studying geological engineering. Here he met his future wife, Shelagh, and they married and graduated the same year, in 1956. Ballard won a position at Shell Oil in Alberta, leading exploration teams on horseback. He left Shell for Mobil Oil and travelled around the world on exploration trips. During these trips his advice was often ignored as he was "only" a BSc (difficult enough in 1950s), and after several such incidents he decided to leave industry and took a doctorate in earth and planetary sciences from Washington University in St. Louis
.
After receiving his PhD in 1963, Ballard worked as a civilian for the U.S. Army, specializing in microwave communications and studying how to hide refueling tanks under the ice in Greenland
. Ballard was working for the Army at Fort Huachuca
in Arizona
in 1973 when the oil crisis
hit. The U.S. government responded by establishing the U.S. Federal Energy Conservation Research office, and started looking for someone to run it. Given his background running projects, the Army seconded him to become the office's director, initially for six months.
He quickly grew disillusioned with the political system. "Energy systems are notorious for their long gestation periods, often twenty years or longer, [but] there had to be a pay-off in a product within five to seven years in order to justify the public money being put in. There are political cycles involving re-election, so the politicians didn't want to put money into systems that were going to come to fruition in some other generation. You sent out the plans, and they hacked and cut at them." When the contract ran out, he decided to quit and strike out on his own.
in place of lead-acid, as they would be much lighter. However, at the time, lithium batteries were not able to be recharged. Schwartz convinced Ballard that they should study the problem, and Ballard cashed in his pension to buy a portion of their new joint venture, American Energizer.
Schwartz and Ballard were introduced to Keith Prater at the University of Texas chemistry department, and sold him on the idea of developing a new rechargeable lithium battery technology with them. Prater was able to quickly determine that that no one knew what the product of the lithium-salt reactions in existing batteries were, and guessed that it was lithium dithionite, which he was able to synthesize. Working in a trailer, Ballard and Schwartz built a simple battery and Prater brought a sample of the lithium dithionite, and when they were placed together and charged, a weak current was produced. After further development the system was able to be recharged about a dozen times.
With the technology looking like it could be made into a commercial enterprise, Ballard contacted an acquaintance, John Horton, to provide further backing. Horton was in the process of re-fitting a small submarine in North Vancouver for oil exploration, and Ballard convinced him that their new battery would be a perfect fit. Horton agreed to provide several thousand dollars a month in funding. With this in place, Ballard purchased an abandoned motel in Arizona for $2,000 and set about turning it into a lab.
By 1977 the batteries were coming along, and Ballard and Prater were shuttling back and forth between Arizona and Vancouver. Ballard had always wanted to return to Canada, so Schwartz sold his interest in the battery technology to Ballard for $1, while Ballard sold his interest in Schwartz's latest venture, a mechanical anti-lock braking system for the same $1. In 1979 Ballard moved to Vancouver and became president and CEO of Ultra Energy.
In Canada, Ultra Energy operated out of the same hanger where Horton was re-fitting his submarine. By the mid-1970s the refit was complete, with no battery in site, and Horton dropped his support for the battery project. After obtaining some private bridge financing, they won a contract for a non-rechargeable lithium battery with a shelf life of 10 years for the fire detector company, Firenetics. After about a year the battery was ready and production was going to be started in Hong Kong
, when, to Ultra's surprise, Firenetics filed for bankruptcy after a long lawsuit with General Electric
. Ultra Energy was insolvent.
decided to take over the rechargeable side of the company, and paid off most of the company's local debts. Now solvent, the company quickly started looking for applications for their technology, and won contracts with the Canadian Forces
to further develop their single-use long-life battery. This led to a successful production line producing thousands of cells for the U.S. and Canadian militaries.
While the single-use design was successful, the rechargeable version never matured. In 1983, Ballard, Prater and Paul Howard started looking for new ideas for their development side to work on as the funds for the battery project dried up. Among a variety of ideas were a number of attempts to find government funding, which eventually led them to a Department of National Defense (DND) request for proposals for bids to produce a low-cost solid polymer fuel cell. Now known as PEM's, these cells had only been used commercially in Project Gemini
and a few other space probes, and General Electric gave up on the technology when NASA
moved onto other fuel cell designs for Project Apollo
and the Space Shuttle
. Although a number of attempts had been made to lower the high cost of PEM cells since then, none had been commercially successful.
At the time, no one in the company had any direct experience with fuel cells, and Ballard himself reputedly stated "What's a fuel cell?" when the topic was first brought up. Prater, with an extensive electrochemical background, flew to the Los Alamos National Laboratory
in New Mexico, where limited PEM research was still being carried out. He managed to gather a small number of parts from test cells that would provide an early start. Meanwhile Ballard sent teams to Ottawa to better understand the contract. Armed with this information from both sources, they won the $500,000 contract, which called for them to provide three prototype cells that produced between 50 and 150 watts and be ready in 28 months. After meeting the requirements, they won a follow-up contract, and it was during this project, in 1986, when they reached a milestone of producing four times as much energy per unit volume as any previous fuel cell.
In 1987 Ballard won a contract with Perry Oceanographics to provide fuel cells for their small submersible
s. After some difficulties in developing a stack of the required 2 kW size using their then-current" Mark IV" cell design, the system was successfully installed and became one of the first commercial fuel cell system since the 1960s. An upgrade to the "Mark V" cell design dramatically improved performance, providing 4.1 kW from a stack the same size as the original 2 kW model. A contract with the Royal Navy
soon followed, and although the resulting cells were not used as the Royal Navy decided to go all-nuclear, a research contract allowed the company to continue improving the cells.
Development from these engineering samples to real-world products was going to be long and expensive. Although the battery line continued to do well, the profits it generated were not enough to run the company as a whole. Ballard started looking for new capital, and found Mike Brown, a founder of the Vancouver-based Ventures West venture capital
company. Ventures West provided several rounds of funding, and Brown suggested that if the company wanted to be successful it was going to need new leadership who was familiar with dealing with large companies. Although the founders found it difficult to accept a stranger into their midst, they were eventually won over and Firoz Rasul became the new CEO. Rasul immediately instituted a development plan with a timeline of goals that had to be met and go/no-go milestones.
The company was re-organized, spinning off the battery side to BTC Engineering, while the fuel cell side became Ballard Technologies Corp. Feeling the technology was ready for commercial use, in 1989 Ballard raised $4 million in public money from the British Columbia government to build a fuel cell powered bus, introducing it at Science World
in 1993. He took the bus to energy fairs around the world, and Daimler-Chrysler and Ford invested $750 million to buy a one-third stake in the newly public Ballard Power Systems. Ballard told Time in 1999 that the fuel-cell cars should become economical by 2010 and "the internal combustion engine will go the way of the horse. It will be a curiosity to my grandchildren."
Taking the technology from laboratory to the road proved very difficult, and after years of development and many rounds of additional funding, Ballard left active management in 1998. The automotive power division was sold to Daimler-Chrysler and Ford in 2008 for $96.6 million, and Daimler currently operates a small number of fuel cell busses in Hamburg, United States, Japan and Singapore. Ballard Power Systems continues its work on PEMFC's for stationary power use and backup systems.
for $10 million.
In 1999 he was named by Time
as 'Hero of the Planet'. In 2002 he was named 'Business Leader of the Year' from Scientific American
. He received the World Technology Network Award in Energy in 1999, and in Environment in 2000. He also received the Gutenberg International Environment prize in Sweden in 2000. He served as chair of the Canadian Hydrogen Association and as an Advisory Board member for the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California.
He died of complications from liver disease at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver.
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
, OBC
Order of British Columbia
The Order of British Columbia is a civilian honour for merit in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Instituted in 1989 by Lieutenant Governor David Lam, on the advice of the Cabinet under Premier Bill Vander Zalm, the order is administered by the Governor-in-Council and is intended to honour...
(16 October 1932 – 2 August 2008) was a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
geophysicist
Geophysics
Geophysics is the physics of the Earth and its environment in space; also the study of the Earth using quantitative physical methods. The term geophysics sometimes refers only to the geological applications: Earth's shape; its gravitational and magnetic fields; its internal structure and...
and businessman. A long time advocate of replacing the internal combustion engine
Internal combustion engine
The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high -pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the engine...
, in 1979 Ballard founded what would become Ballard Power Systems
Ballard Power Systems
Ballard Power Systems , located in Burnaby, British Columbia -- a suburb of Vancouver -- is a company that designs, develops, and manufactures zero emission proton-exchange-membrane fuel cells. This company has made a bus that uses only hydrogen fuel cells. These fuel cells combine hydrogen and...
to develop commercial applications of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell
Proton exchange membrane fuel cell
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells, also known as polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells , are a type of fuel cell being developed for transport applications as well as for stationary fuel cell applications and portable fuel cell applications. Their distinguishing features include lower...
(PEM). Acknowledged worldwide as the father of the fuel cell
Fuel cell
A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. Hydrogen is the most common fuel, but hydrocarbons such as natural gas and alcohols like methanol are sometimes used...
industry, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
named him a "Hero for the Planet" in 1999.
Early life and education
Ballard was born in Niagara Falls, OntarioNiagara Falls, Ontario
Niagara Falls is a Canadian city on the Niagara River in the Golden Horseshoe region of Southern Ontario. The municipality was incorporated on June 12, 1903...
, to Jessie Marguerite Mildred of the Rowntree's
Rowntree's
Rowntree's was a confectionery business based in York, England. It is now a historic brand owned by Nestlé, used to market a range of fruit gums and pastilles formerly owned by Rowntree's. Following a merger with John Mackintosh & Co., the Company became known as Rowntree Mackintosh, was listed on...
family in York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...
and Archibald Hall Ballard of Staten Island, New York. His father studied electrochemical engineering at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
and later specialized in the area of radiation. He was working at Carborundum Corporation when the lab director fell overboard from a boat during a party and was washed over Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...
, so Archibald Ballard was promoted to lab director at a relatively young age in his mid-40s. He spent most of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
at Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson and Roane counties in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of Knoxville. Oak Ridge's population was 27,387 at the 2000 census...
, working on the atomic bomb.
After high school in Niagara Falls, Ballard attended Queen's University
Queen's University
Queen's University, , is a public research university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Founded on 16 October 1841, the university pre-dates the founding of Canada by 26 years. Queen's holds more more than of land throughout Ontario as well as Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England...
in Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...
, studying geological engineering. Here he met his future wife, Shelagh, and they married and graduated the same year, in 1956. Ballard won a position at Shell Oil in Alberta, leading exploration teams on horseback. He left Shell for Mobil Oil and travelled around the world on exploration trips. During these trips his advice was often ignored as he was "only" a BSc (difficult enough in 1950s), and after several such incidents he decided to leave industry and took a doctorate in earth and planetary sciences from Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...
.
After receiving his PhD in 1963, Ballard worked as a civilian for the U.S. Army, specializing in microwave communications and studying how to hide refueling tanks under the ice in Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
. Ballard was working for the Army at Fort Huachuca
Fort Huachuca
Fort Huachuca is a United States Army installation under the command of the United States Army Installation Management Command. It is located in Cochise County, in southeast Arizona, about north of the border with Mexico. Beginning in 1913, for 20 years the fort was the base for the "Buffalo...
in Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
in 1973 when the oil crisis
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
hit. The U.S. government responded by establishing the U.S. Federal Energy Conservation Research office, and started looking for someone to run it. Given his background running projects, the Army seconded him to become the office's director, initially for six months.
He quickly grew disillusioned with the political system. "Energy systems are notorious for their long gestation periods, often twenty years or longer, [but] there had to be a pay-off in a product within five to seven years in order to justify the public money being put in. There are political cycles involving re-election, so the politicians didn't want to put money into systems that were going to come to fruition in some other generation. You sent out the plans, and they hacked and cut at them." When the contract ran out, he decided to quit and strike out on his own.
American Energizer
One of the studies he had been involved in at the Conservation Research office was on electric cars powered by conventional lead-acid batteries. None of these stuck him as practical, but he was convinced that electric traction was the future. He told Discover Magazine in a 2002 interview that "My goal from the very beginning was replacing the internal combustion engine -- just getting that off the streets." Ballard had earlier met Ralph Schwartz in Arizona, who introduced him to the idea of using lithium batteriesLithium battery
Lithium batteries are disposable batteries that have lithium metal or lithium compounds as an anode. Depending on the design and chemical compounds used, lithium cells can produce voltages from 1.5 V to about 3.7 V, over twice the voltage of an ordinary zinc–carbon battery or alkaline battery...
in place of lead-acid, as they would be much lighter. However, at the time, lithium batteries were not able to be recharged. Schwartz convinced Ballard that they should study the problem, and Ballard cashed in his pension to buy a portion of their new joint venture, American Energizer.
Schwartz and Ballard were introduced to Keith Prater at the University of Texas chemistry department, and sold him on the idea of developing a new rechargeable lithium battery technology with them. Prater was able to quickly determine that that no one knew what the product of the lithium-salt reactions in existing batteries were, and guessed that it was lithium dithionite, which he was able to synthesize. Working in a trailer, Ballard and Schwartz built a simple battery and Prater brought a sample of the lithium dithionite, and when they were placed together and charged, a weak current was produced. After further development the system was able to be recharged about a dozen times.
With the technology looking like it could be made into a commercial enterprise, Ballard contacted an acquaintance, John Horton, to provide further backing. Horton was in the process of re-fitting a small submarine in North Vancouver for oil exploration, and Ballard convinced him that their new battery would be a perfect fit. Horton agreed to provide several thousand dollars a month in funding. With this in place, Ballard purchased an abandoned motel in Arizona for $2,000 and set about turning it into a lab.
By 1977 the batteries were coming along, and Ballard and Prater were shuttling back and forth between Arizona and Vancouver. Ballard had always wanted to return to Canada, so Schwartz sold his interest in the battery technology to Ballard for $1, while Ballard sold his interest in Schwartz's latest venture, a mechanical anti-lock braking system for the same $1. In 1979 Ballard moved to Vancouver and became president and CEO of Ultra Energy.
In Canada, Ultra Energy operated out of the same hanger where Horton was re-fitting his submarine. By the mid-1970s the refit was complete, with no battery in site, and Horton dropped his support for the battery project. After obtaining some private bridge financing, they won a contract for a non-rechargeable lithium battery with a shelf life of 10 years for the fire detector company, Firenetics. After about a year the battery was ready and production was going to be started in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, when, to Ultra's surprise, Firenetics filed for bankruptcy after a long lawsuit with General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
. Ultra Energy was insolvent.
Ballard Power Systems
The main Ultra Energy team immediately re-formed as Ballard Research, taking over offices directly across the street from the Ultra ones. Ballard started calling old contacts in the oil industry, looking for companies that might be interested in diversifying their energy holdings. Shell was interested and kept the company afloat for a time, but dropped their interest when one of the minority shareholders held out. In mid-1981, AmocoAmoco
Amoco Corporation, originally Standard Oil Company , was a global chemical and oil company, founded in 1889 around a refinery located in Whiting, Indiana, United States....
decided to take over the rechargeable side of the company, and paid off most of the company's local debts. Now solvent, the company quickly started looking for applications for their technology, and won contracts with the Canadian Forces
Canadian Forces
The Canadian Forces , officially the Canadian Armed Forces , are the unified armed forces of Canada, as constituted by the National Defence Act, which states: "The Canadian Forces are the armed forces of Her Majesty raised by Canada and consist of one Service called the Canadian Armed Forces."...
to further develop their single-use long-life battery. This led to a successful production line producing thousands of cells for the U.S. and Canadian militaries.
While the single-use design was successful, the rechargeable version never matured. In 1983, Ballard, Prater and Paul Howard started looking for new ideas for their development side to work on as the funds for the battery project dried up. Among a variety of ideas were a number of attempts to find government funding, which eventually led them to a Department of National Defense (DND) request for proposals for bids to produce a low-cost solid polymer fuel cell. Now known as PEM's, these cells had only been used commercially in Project Gemini
Project Gemini
Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program of NASA, the civilian space agency of the United States government. Project Gemini was conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, with ten manned flights occurring in 1965 and 1966....
and a few other space probes, and General Electric gave up on the technology when NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
moved onto other fuel cell designs for Project Apollo
Project Apollo
The Apollo program was the spaceflight effort carried out by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration , that landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Apollo began in earnest after President John F...
and the Space Shuttle
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
. Although a number of attempts had been made to lower the high cost of PEM cells since then, none had been commercially successful.
At the time, no one in the company had any direct experience with fuel cells, and Ballard himself reputedly stated "What's a fuel cell?" when the topic was first brought up. Prater, with an extensive electrochemical background, flew to the Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
in New Mexico, where limited PEM research was still being carried out. He managed to gather a small number of parts from test cells that would provide an early start. Meanwhile Ballard sent teams to Ottawa to better understand the contract. Armed with this information from both sources, they won the $500,000 contract, which called for them to provide three prototype cells that produced between 50 and 150 watts and be ready in 28 months. After meeting the requirements, they won a follow-up contract, and it was during this project, in 1986, when they reached a milestone of producing four times as much energy per unit volume as any previous fuel cell.
In 1987 Ballard won a contract with Perry Oceanographics to provide fuel cells for their small submersible
Submersible
A submersible is a small vehicle designed to operate underwater. The term submersible is often used to differentiate from other underwater vehicles known as submarines, in that a submarine is a fully autonomous craft, capable of renewing its own power and breathing air, whereas a submersible is...
s. After some difficulties in developing a stack of the required 2 kW size using their then-current" Mark IV" cell design, the system was successfully installed and became one of the first commercial fuel cell system since the 1960s. An upgrade to the "Mark V" cell design dramatically improved performance, providing 4.1 kW from a stack the same size as the original 2 kW model. A contract with the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
soon followed, and although the resulting cells were not used as the Royal Navy decided to go all-nuclear, a research contract allowed the company to continue improving the cells.
Development from these engineering samples to real-world products was going to be long and expensive. Although the battery line continued to do well, the profits it generated were not enough to run the company as a whole. Ballard started looking for new capital, and found Mike Brown, a founder of the Vancouver-based Ventures West venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
company. Ventures West provided several rounds of funding, and Brown suggested that if the company wanted to be successful it was going to need new leadership who was familiar with dealing with large companies. Although the founders found it difficult to accept a stranger into their midst, they were eventually won over and Firoz Rasul became the new CEO. Rasul immediately instituted a development plan with a timeline of goals that had to be met and go/no-go milestones.
The company was re-organized, spinning off the battery side to BTC Engineering, while the fuel cell side became Ballard Technologies Corp. Feeling the technology was ready for commercial use, in 1989 Ballard raised $4 million in public money from the British Columbia government to build a fuel cell powered bus, introducing it at Science World
Science World at TELUS World of Science
Science World at Telus World of Science, Vancouver is a science centre run by a not-for-profit organization in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada...
in 1993. He took the bus to energy fairs around the world, and Daimler-Chrysler and Ford invested $750 million to buy a one-third stake in the newly public Ballard Power Systems. Ballard told Time in 1999 that the fuel-cell cars should become economical by 2010 and "the internal combustion engine will go the way of the horse. It will be a curiosity to my grandchildren."
Taking the technology from laboratory to the road proved very difficult, and after years of development and many rounds of additional funding, Ballard left active management in 1998. The automotive power division was sold to Daimler-Chrysler and Ford in 2008 for $96.6 million, and Daimler currently operates a small number of fuel cell busses in Hamburg, United States, Japan and Singapore. Ballard Power Systems continues its work on PEMFC's for stationary power use and backup systems.
After Ballard
After leaving full-time management at Ballard Power Systems, in 2000 Ballard formed General Hydrogen, which worked on the problems of generating and distributing hydrogen. In 2007, the company was sold to Plug PowerPlug Power
-History:Plug Power was founded as a joint venture between DTE Energy and Mechanical Technology Inc. in 1997....
for $10 million.
In 1999 he was named by Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
as 'Hero of the Planet'. In 2002 he was named 'Business Leader of the Year' from Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
. He received the World Technology Network Award in Energy in 1999, and in Environment in 2000. He also received the Gutenberg International Environment prize in Sweden in 2000. He served as chair of the Canadian Hydrogen Association and as an Advisory Board member for the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California.
He died of complications from liver disease at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver.