"The Hamburg Citaro bus service contract is a significant milestone for our work in the fuel cell bus arena," said John Sheridan, Ballard's President and CEO. "These Hamburg vehicles are the largest fleet of fuel cell buses in operation anywhere today, and 2010 will be the fleet's eighth year of operation - the longest of any fuel cell bus fleet to date. This is positive evidence of the reliability of our fuel cell bus products."

The Hamburg buses are powered by Ballard-designed P5 fuel cell engines. Two of Ballard's Mark902 HD fuel cell modules, with a total power output of 300 kW's, are installed on the roof of each bus together with other equipment needed to manage the entire fuel cell system. Ballard will provide a number of services in support of all fuel cell components, including: repair and logistics; provision of spare parts, as needed; plus remote and on-site technical services. Each bus is also equipped with a hydrogen fuel storage tank and the city of Hamburg maintains a central fueling facility for the fleet.

Fuel cell buses offer a number of advantages over diesel buses, including: zero tail pipe emissions; significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions on a well-to-wheels basis; reduced future operating cost; high level of reliability; noise reduction; and improved performance.

Ballard fuel cell modules have provided power for buses in revenue service across 15 cities in 12 countries around the world. These buses have traveled over 2.0 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) and have carried in excess of 7 million passengers. The company is currently developing a next-generation fuel cell bus module, called HD6, which will be supplied for the BC Transit 2010 Olympic Bus Program and the London Bus Program.

Hamburg is a fuel cell demonstration centre under the German government's National Innovation Programme (NIP). Goals of the NIP are to generate environmental benefits through reduced (or zero) emissions, increase energy supply through the use of various sources of hydrogen and achieve economic growth by means of innovative and sustainable technologies.

About Ballard Power Systems

Ballard Power Systems (TSX: BLD)(NASDAQ: BLDP) is recognized as a world leader in the design, development, manufacture and sale of clean energy fuel cell products. Ballard's mission is to accelerate fuel cell product adoption. To learn more about what Ballard is doing with Power to Change the World(R), visit www.ballard.com.