Ballard poked his way through a derelict motel a short walk from the Mexican border and held his nose. He needed a cheap laboratory in which to pursue his dream of finding an alternative to the internal combustion engine. Watching their hoses blast the place clean, Ballard planned the layout of his lab, and how he would go about reducing the world's consumption of fossil fuels. For the first few years, Ballard and a few partners and cronies soldiered away on shoestring budgets, stumbling upon exotic chemicals and nearly blowing themselves up in the process. The company went bankrupt and then revived for a fresh start.
Life's a beach with fuel-cell powered cars.
In 1983, after relocating to North Vancouver in British Columbia, the company got a small contract to develop a quiet power source with low infrared emissions for the Canadian military. Funding could only support a three-person technical team, working in an industrial bay next door to an auto body shop. It was a case of small in fact being beautiful. There was no corporate bureaucracy to slow them down. If something didn't work, they sent out for pizza and beer, stayed up until midnight, and tried an alternative approach.