Tim Brown

President @FirstElement Fuel, Inc.

Newport Beach, CA, US

My partners and I founded FirstElement in order to provide safe, reliable, retail hydrogen fuel to enable the commercial success of fuel cell electric vehicles. I fervently believe that fuel cell cars offer our best hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving air quality, and reducing our reliance on oil because they can seamlessly replace gasoline cars. The performance, size, range, and refueling times for fuel cell cars are identical to those of their gasoline counterparts.I had the luxury of driving fuel cell cars and refueling with hydrogen extensively over the past several years, yet I saw little progress towards a commercial hydrogen fueling network. The pieces for a network all exist; hydrogen is available, hydrogen station equipment is available, property is available, city zoning for hydrogen has been written, and automakers stand ready with awesome cars. Someone just has to put the pieces together. FirstElement was formed somewhat reluctantly for this task. But now that we’ve started, we are going to see this through to completion, come hell or high water.

University of Michigan

MS, Automotive Systems Engineering

University of Notre Dame

BS, Mechanical Engineering

UC Irvine

PhD, Mechanical Engineering