Bulletin: Ballard Sells Automotive Assets to Daimler, Ford

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Ballard Sells Automotive Assets to Daimler, Ford to Form New Auto Fuel Cell Company

VANCOUVER, November 8 – Faster than anticipated, Ballard Power Systems confirmed today that it is selling its automotive fuel cell assets to both Germany’s Daimler AG and Detroit’s Ford Motor Co., forming a new company, Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation.

Daimler will be the majority owner of the new group with 50.1%, and Ballard will continue to hold almost 20%, with Ford holding 30%. Ballard will transfer 113 employees, intellectual property and US $ 6 million worth of test equipment and inventory to the new company. It will be located on Ballard’s premises here, Ballard president and CEO John Sheridan said during what was supposed to be a quarterly financial results conference call. Total staff is expected to be about 150, Daimler said in a separate release.

The new company will be headed by Dr. Andreas Truckenbrodt, currently Daimler’s executive director for hybrid development, Daimler added. Truckenbrodt previously worked one year at Ballard, and he was in charge of Daimler’s fuel cell development from 2003 to 2004.

Ballard which has been pioneering both automotive and other fuel cell r&d for two decades, sees shedding the long-term, big-bucks, moving-target automotive fuel cell development as a way of focusing on more profitable, nearer-term commercial growth markets such as fuel cells for materials handling equipment, backup power and co-generation, but, interestingly, also fuel cell buses.

The new arrangement, hammered out in what Sheridan said were two months of “intense negotiations,” was signed by all parties only last night. The financial markets evidently approved: when rumors about the change first surfaced at the beginning of the week, Ballard’s shares gained significantly, and during today’s conference call, a couple of analysts congratulated Sheridan on the move.

(A more detailed version of this report will appear in the upcoming December issue of “The Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter”)

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