GLG News by Mr. Jack Lifton, Managing Director
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
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May 4, 2009
Mining: Lynas, Wpl, OZL, ILU | ibtimes.com.au
China's hunt for natural resources to feed its already substantial heavy industrial base and its growing consumer products industry is fueled by the size of the reserves of capital accumulated by the Chinese state and driven by the single-minded goal of China's government of full employment for China. America's more and more isolated response to this drive by China for natural resources is to ignore it and assume that America and the Western world will continue to follow the American model of myopic free market capitalism in which natural resources will always be miraculously made available to the highest bidder. American bankers like to say that the golden rule is that "Them thats got the gold makes the rules." They're wrong. The rule is "Them thats got the rare resources makes the rules." Its the last few minutes of the new "Great Game," and it's not looking good for the home team.
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May 1, 2009
Lynas Corp strikes $505m China deal | www.wabusinessnews.com.au
China today produces at least 95% of the world's supply of rare earth elements from its domestic mines primarily in Inner Mongolia. At the beginning of 2008 two very large Australian REE mines were well on the way to coming into production. Either one of them would eventually have been the largest single-point mine for REEs in the world. One of the Australian companies was also beginning construction of a REE refinery in Malaysia, which would have been the largest in the world outside of China. Control of the shares of both of the Australian companies is now coming into hands of state owned aggressive Chinese mining and trading entities. It has been predicted that Chinese domestic demand for REEs will exceed its domestic production in the next 2-4 years. That is precisely how long it will take for the two Australian mines and the Malaysian refinery to be brought into production. Three significant REE mining possibilities, only, now remain out of Chinese control.
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April 27, 2009
Obama promises major investment in R&D | finance.yahoo.com
It takes twelve to twenty years to find, select, encourage, test, and educate scientists, engineers, and medical professionals. By contrast it takes just a few minutes to select from a crowd those who will run for public office. Yet the future of innovation in America depends on this second class of selected individuals. It is always just luck that gets us progress with this polticized selection system for education. America can not depend on luck.
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April 22, 2009
Platinum Pollution Issue Gets Measured | www.nature.com
The ability of analytical chemists to detect low levels of metals in water has gone far beyond the ability of environmentalists to exercise common sense and good judgement.
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April 20, 2009
Molycorp Minerals, LLC Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire Controlling Interest in Great Western Minerals Group | uk.sys-con.com
What possible advantage can there be for MolyCorp, which was privatized in 2008 by a group of venture funds, one specializing in mining, and underwritten by Goldman Sachs, in acquiring the publicly traded Great Western Minerals Group (http://www.gwmg.ca)? It may be that GWMG's business model and operations contains something that completes MolyCorp's business model for its Mountain Pass, California, rare earth mine, so that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
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April 20, 2009
Hybrid Hummer Promises 100 Miles per Gallon | blog.wired.com
The celebration of the creation of sophomoric toys for elites with public money ignores the fact that the supply and demand of lithium is a zero sum game. When the demand for high end toys for people with unlimited discretionary spending ability is high the demand for practical devices for the person of average means will go unfilled. Each 53 kWh battery for a Hummer, for example, will, if a lithium-ion type, use 53 kg, or 116 lb of lithium; it will cost as much as $53,000 at retail just for this battery!
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April 13, 2009
No easy road for U.S. auto industry | www.latimes.com
It's been a common practice for carmakers to first introduce a new vehicle "type" in limited production as a marketing test. There have been, for example, the Corvette, the Thunderbird, the Aquacar, the Edsel, the Pinto, The Chevrolet Vega, The Cadillac Cimmeron, the American Motors Alliance, the Chrysler K-car, the Chrysler Minivan, the SUV, The GM EV1, the Toyota Prius, and so on. Few of the very, very, expensive marketing gambles for OEM auto makers have ever paid off, or even repaid their tooling costs, viz the second edition of the Thunderbird by Ford This explains why auto makers are reluctant to try out totally new car types or radical "under the hood changes" the benefits of which need to be explained to non technical customers. The reluctance of any major car maker to put a pure EV or a lithium battery using vehicle on any kind into even limited production is an old story not a new one.
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April 8, 2009
Oil Giants Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead | www.nytimes.com
The energy calculus that drives the creation of alternate sources of electricity is very simple: The world runs on the fuel that delivers the lowest cost per watt. The key problem today with the electrification of cars, by which I mean the change of power trains for private passenger carrying vehicles from hydrocarbon burning internal combustion engines, ICEs, to electric drive trains powered by batteries, is the initial cost of batteries that can replace the performance of ICEs. Lithium-ion batteries, though today they must be hand made and selected, can be used to manufacture high performance private cars with decent ranges, but the battery for the Tesla, which it is claimed will allow an electric vehicle, EV, to go up to 150 mph and have a range of 300 miles, costs nearly $40,000.00, and the Tesla equipped with this battery will cost around 125,000 at retail. No one today knows how to make EVs with a range of 300 miles and a top speed over 45 competitively with ICEs.
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April 6, 2009
Lithium-ion Batteries: 9 Years of Price Stagnation | seekingalpha.com
After nine years of research and billions of dollars of testing ideas it is obvious that there is no technology or manufacturing process extant or on the horizon that can bring to the market a practical, economically competitive, lithium-ion battery that can be used in a power train for an electrified private passenger carrying motor vehicle. Why does the research continue?
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Diasappointed Expectations: The American Market and the Electric Car
April 5, 2009
We Drive Nissan's Electric Car, and It's Sweet | blog.wired.com
By world standards, Americans live, on average, geographically far apart and expect to cover long distances in a hurry. No other country in history has had its personal travel ethic organized in this way. On top of this unique approach to spreading out and moving fast America has been the victim of a voracious OEM automotive industry that ran to extinction the logical build up of mass transportation among its cities other than in a narrow corridor on the east coast within which the elites of finance and government lived without any interest in the effect of the absence of mass transportation in "flyover" country. To this day these same elites ignore the effect of legislating cost onto personal transportation for the ordinary person just so the elites can feel good about "being green" as well as being ,economically, just plain stupid. The idea of the electrification of the motor car is actually too late and too narrow to do much good for the majority of Americans.
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Can We Afford To Bet Our American Economy On The Supposition That Freeman Dyson Is Wrong?
April 1, 2009
The Civil Heretic | www.nytimes.com
Albert Einstein's work was considered heretical, because it was interpreted by those who thought him wrong as a repudiation of Newton who as everyone knew was right. Those who challenged Einstein were for the most part not only very eminent but who also had an understanding of the issues being raised by Einstein. There were very few people qualified to challenge Einstein, but the average person, no matter how intelligent, was not among them. Einstein's detractors and his supporters were both among the cream of the human race in intelligence. What they had in common was their belief that only empirical evidence could resolve the issue, as it ultimately did when an critical experiment was designed that could be carried out practically. That is not at all how to describe the cult like followers of the religion of global warming, and it is a very good reason to withhold judgement on global warming until all of the facts are in.
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Will Artisanal Producers of Cars, Such as Tesla, Make Safe Ones? Probably Not.
March 29, 2009
Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don’t Work? | www.nytimes.com
The rush to "save energy" and lower emissions of carbon dioxide has resulted in a rush to market of cheap, poorly made, short lived so-called "compact" fluorescent bulbs. Even with "only" 40 to 50 components it has been impossible to make these bulbs reliable enough and cheap enough, so that the cost of using them and the emissions from making them over and over again as replacements ultimatly for themselves are actually higher than they would have been had consumers simply continued using incandescent lamps. How many components and systems are there in a motor car not eben counting the power train? Aren't the chnaces of component failure unacceptably high unless you have either 100% testing or a long established statistical quality analysis of failure modes?
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March 27, 2009
Toyota's low-cost hybrid to be based on Yaris | www.autobloggreen.com
It is certain that the prices of the critical technology metals, which are required for the manufacturing of the nickel metal hydride batteries for Toyota's current Hybrid Synergy Drive, will be going up by 2011 as demand for them is predicted to exceed supply sometime in or soon after 2011. Toyota can perhaps reduce its cost of these metals by using less in smaller batteries, but with increasing prices that may not work. Perhaps Toyota is going to use its own version of what I am going to now name "Rare Metals Auditing and Conservation" or RAMAC, which in a way will allow a company to lease its own metals from itself. This can stabilize a supply while allowing it to increase whenever possible.
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March 25, 2009
Why Long Range EVs Can Never Be Cost Effective | www.altenergystocks.com
I urge you to read the article upon which this review and analysis is based, and when you are done doing that I urge you to read the associated article by the same author, John Petersen, entitled "Li-ion Battery Manufacturers: The Bleeding Edge of Energy Storage Technology." There is a hot link to this second article in the first paragraph in the commentary section below. After reading both articles please tell me why there is any argument supporting the use of tax dollars to develop lithium-ion batteries, or engineering methods to mass produce them, if the sole purpose of that development is to power electrified vehicles such as plug-in hybrids or battery only propelled motor cars for private passenger carrying use?
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Congress Directs The Navy To Look At Thorium Fueled Reactors For Naval Propulsion Power Needs
March 24, 2009
Although thorium is not today mined in the USA commercially, the US House of Representatives had placed before it on March 16 of this year, last week, a bill sponsored by Mr Joe Sestak (D-Pa) directing the US Navy to study all aspects of utilizing thorium in reactor fuel for shipboard propulsion. Rear Admiral Sestak (Ret) is the highest ranking former military officer currently serving in the House of Representatives. Note that the same title is held in the Senate by Rear Admiral John McCain (R-Az). Last month Senators Hatch and Reid introduced into the Senate a bipartisan bill to amend the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to authorize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to study thorium fuel configurations and to fund such studies. There is certainly a lot of activity in this session of Congress with regard to a metal, which although the US has in abundance, is not mined here at all.
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EV Statrups like Tesla and Fisker Will Not Survive A Mainsteam Auto Collapse
March 17, 2009
Can EV startups survive mainstream auto collapse? | www.autobloggreen.com
Automobiles are not built from do it yourself hardware obtainable at Home Depot or Loews. The components of an automobile are made from the strongest and most durable and temperature extreme resistant metals, plastics, and fabrics. The structural "frame" or "chassis" of an automobile or truck must be made of steel or aluminum or magnesium alloys/or and plastics that can absorb high energy impact shocks without shattering. The power trains for such vehicles must be safe against mechanical breakdowns, sudden interruptions of core functions, and containment of flammable and/or explosive fuels in the case of an impact that could rupture fuel containers. The tires for all such vehicles must be resistant to be torn or punctured and have internal cohesion high enough so that they don't disintegrate under impact or sheering forces. Service for all mechanical and electrical and electronic components must be universally available. Etc., etc.,...
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March 13, 2009
Driving Hybrid Disbelievers Into the Fold | www.washingtonpost.com
Ford manufactures all of its current hybrid models, both of them, the Ford Escape and the Mercury Mariner, in its Kansas City Assembly plant. It has now begun production of two additional models, the Ford Fusion and the Mercury Milan, at the same facility. Ford's plan, however, is to move production of the Fusion and Milan hybrids to its Hermosillio, Mexico assembly plant. This move will turn the Fusion and Mariner hybrids into Mexican vehicles assembled using a Japanese designed power train with the key component made in Japan. Why should anyone believe that this will stimulate the American economy or create jobs in the USA for American workers?
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March 12, 2009
Unico, Inc. Announces In-House Evaluation of Historical Data Regarding Tellurium Levels at the Deer Trail Mine | money.cnn.com
There are some practical reasons why a mass produced technology cannot depend critically on the metal tellurium: 1. There is very little new tellurium produced annually, certainly less than 1000 tons, 2. There is very little likelihood that additional tellurium production based mainly on incrased total recovery of tellurium byproducts from base metal ores can more than double present production in even the most optimistic scenario, and 3. Thin film devices have a lower limit of effectiveness both practically and economically, because they have a threshold of thickness below which they do not work.
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March 12, 2009
GM seeks credit insurance to help suppliers maintain parts deliveries | www.autonews.com
By outsourcing to overseas suppliers,components and services based solely on price, with no regard for the long term consequences of this agenda, companies like General Motors guaranteed that American jobs, including those of their own employees, would be lost. Now having helped through sheer ignorance of, or active disinterest in, any long term consequences of their actions, which have contributed to the destruction of the ability of American workers to be able to buy their cars and trucks, short sighted companies such as GM are asking the US treasury to compound the felony and guarantee GM's payments to its suppliers regardless of their location and who they employ! This foolish proposal is an insult to the American taxpayer. No matter what the difference in cost between, for example, a Chinese made auto part and one made in Ohio guaranteeing payment to the Chinese supplier simply robs the American taxpayer of any value to be gained by such an undertaking.
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March 11, 2009
Azure Dynamics Hybrid Delivery-Truck Test Drive: Gas/Electric Hybrid Offers 30 Percent MPG Improvement | www.popularmechanics.com
The CEO of the Korean electronics giant, LG, said recently that nickel metal hydride batteries were "primitive" and would be soon replaced by "advanced" lithium-ion batteries for use in the electrification of vehicles. This comment was pure hype and was biased by the fact that LG has won the contract to supply lithium-ion batteries for the 40 mile range, pricey golf cart performance matching Chevrolet Volt. The aforesaid CEO does not, of course, want to take note of the fact that the development of "advanced" nickel metal hydride batteries has continued even beyond their "primitive" use in the hybrids mass produced and sold as the Toyota Prius, Toyota Camry, Ford Escape, Mercury Mariner, Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, and Honda Insight to name the most prominent. These so-called "primitive" batteries have a record of reliability, durability, overall life, and recyclability that is second to none. In addition their pricing has steadily dropped(!) since their introduction.
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