What happens when a TV director tells the world's biggest car manufacturers they're wrong?

Nick Abson had never built a car. He had no fuel cell, no company and no experience in the automotive industry.

So naturally, he stood up in front of 3,000 people and declared he would beat Mercedes Benz.

What began as a moment of frustration at an international fuel cell conference would become one of the most audacious promises in clean energy history. As Nick finds himself pulled deeper into the world of hydrogen, he starts to realise that groundbreaking technology alone isn't enough to change the world.

Behind the excitement lies a more complicated story, one of power, influence, ambition and the forces shaping the future of energy before most people even knew it existed.

This is the episode where an outsider picks a fight with an entire industry and accidentally changes the course of his life forever.

Key takeaways

- The moment Nick publicly challenged the biggest names in the hydrogen fuel cell industry

- Why a single act of injustice sparked an impossible promise

- What the fuel cell industry looked like before clean energy entered the mainstream

- How powerful interests were already shaping the future of hydrogen technology

- The surprising conversation that helped explain fuel cells in the simplest possible terms

- Why Nick became convinced that clean energy should belong to communities, not corporations

- The unlikely chain of events that led to the creation of ZEVCO

- How one bold decision transformed a TV producer into a clean energy insurgent

- Why some revolutions begin by accident

This isn't just a podcast. It's an investigation into the clean energy revolution we almost had and the future we can still build.

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New episodes drop every other Wednesday.

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00:00 Introduction

01:33 Who Was Alan Lloyd and Why He Mattered

04:19 Nick's Daughter Alex and the Fuel Cell Sandwich Explanation

07:06 Who Really Owns a Fuel Cell?

10:00 The World Fuel Cell Council and the First Signs of Control

11:07 The Conference in Long Beach

13:07 The Speech That Made Nick the Most Hated Man in the Room

16:42The Phone Call on the Bus That Changed Everything

18:31 Joe Maceda, a Hotel Phone Booth and the Birth of ZEVCO

The true story of limitless clean power, and why we still don’t have it. Maverick TV director turned hydrogen fuel cell pioneer Nick Abson (and same guy who brought us Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ and Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’) - resurfaces after years underground - to tell his unbelievable story, in conversation with filmmaker Harry Otto Brünjes; having been locked in an against-all-odds battle to liberate clean energy, after the tech was stolen by Russians. JOIN THE MISSION at https://www.goingcleanisdirtybusiness.

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