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Sounds like you worked on a lot of the stationary fuel cells for power generation at IFC. Were you ever involved with any of their automotive projects (the Hyundai engine, or the GM engines?).

" fuel cells are expensive, finicky, delicate, respond poorly to a need for acceleration power, are damaged by exposure to sub-freezing temperatures and have a limited life of less than five years"

A few thoughts from me on those points:

Cost is reduced by volume production.
A lot of delicate designs can be made robust over time.
Most system designs for cars include 'peaking' batteries for acceleration
Limited life is usually a materials and manufacturing cost issue

Fuel cells are just one power source choice in the emerging hybridized vehicles. The issues you point out are well known, and appear to be engineering issues, at least to me. Are there some tall pole barriers in any of these points that you could mention?

I spent 3.5 years on PAFC life extension issues and 1.5 years on MCFC fuel impurity tolerance issues. I probably hold the world record for longest running fuel cell. I inherited a test cell with 10,000 hours on it, and it ran for my entire career at IFC, and was shut down roughly 3 months after I left. It had about 30% of its original performance when I left.

The main cost in a fuel cell is platinum catalyst. More fuel cells will mean an increase in the price of platinum. Manufacturing costs are significant and, as you mentioned, can help to reduce cost. The two factors may offset each other.

I guess by delicate, I was refering to the importance of maintaining a range of humidity. A poorly operated cell will either flood or dry out. Flooding is reversible (but will result in a temporary loss of power), drying out is not. Impurities in the fuel (hydrogen or in the oxygen) will accumulate in the fuel cell and cause a permanent loss of capability. Since I left before automotive applications became a major area of research, I cannot attest to using batteries for peaking power - although I did run a program that employed paladium to "store " hydrogen in the fuel cell itself for such a purpose (it was not successful). Limited life, in the case of PEM fuel cells, is related to how the cell was operated (of which I'm not very familiar with). In the case of PAFCs, life is limited by catalyst recrystalization (and subsequent surface area loss), electrolyte redistribution, shorts and crossover of gasses.