Replies to post #45444 on Plug Power Inc (PLUG)

[jolivi01]

Not necessarily … it’s not a linear relationship …. It’s dynamic … the acceleration of cost reductions will at some point in time (hopefully sooner than later) make it to profitable land … as the Japanese did with the hand held calculators industry back then dominating the industry … they lost huge at the beginning but with increased volume and costs dropping sharply in time they become highly profitable and dominant … I see PLUG following the same strategy … it may become dominant and pretty profitable hopefully pretty soon - It’s the combination of what is called algorithmic cost reduction and combinatorial innovation - IMO

[WeTheMarket]

Steve and Toofuzzy, as a reminder this is what Andy Marsh said during the 2nd quarter earnings call on August 5th in response to a question from Craig Irwin regarding costs:

Craig Irwin
I'm great. Congratulations on that really nice revenue guide. It's good to see the traction. Andy, I remember many years ago, in Albany, when you were working on the cost out of your systems, you really did an impeccable job by engineering the product. And then there was a little bit of a -- let's just say technology, substitution technology evolution in there as well. This giga factory you're going to be building. This is more an innovation on the manufacturing side, not just on the technology. So it's a more holistic approach.
Can you maybe help us understand the potential cost improvement on stack production out of this facility and electrolyzer production I should say, too? Are we looking at very material cost down in overall system economics? Is there something that you see is key to unlocking the longer term margins of the company?

Andy Marsh
Craig, I think you hit it on the head. And I'm going to say -- I brought Dave in, to automate that factory and help us significantly drive down costs. When I look at the cost of MEAs, when I look at the fact that we're moving to metal stamp plates for our stacks, when I look at we're changing the whole manufacturing process for how you manufacture electrolyzers by going from a wet to a dry, we see step changes in cost.
So, I think before we do other work, I think you're probably thinking about the cost sort of typical stacks and drop 20%. But there's still so much more. We've been in our Latham factory, Craig. One of the areas is -- I kind of opened this call, and I talked about that improving our manufacturing, both at the giga factory and in Latham. We're looking at all sorts of tracking systems and make sure we're on top of everything, not only will drive down on material costs, it will make our quality better and our service better and predictability better.
I was there at the giga factory yesterday, watching the construction process. And I think it's going to be a game changer for our costs.