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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March 9, 2009
Ford CEO Mullaly expects "major portion" of Fords will be electric within a decade | www.autoblog.com
The CEO of the Ford Motor Company doesn't seem to worry about supply or value chain dynamics for the critical raw materials for the batteries or the electric motors that his company, Ford, would need its suppliers to have access to in order for Ford's future to be electrified
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March 6, 2009
Does GM's Volt Make Sense? | www.technologyreview.com
For the US Federal Government to bailout GM's current business model is a futile exercise in welfare state economics. There is no hope of success if GM's flawed "public relations" driven business model is not terminated and replaced.
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Braking Wind: Where's the Neodymium Going To Come from?
March 4, 2009
Top wind-turbine firms: U.S. parts makers needed | www.freep.com
It has been estimated that to build the latest and most efficient one megawatt capacity wind turbine powered electric generator requires one ton of the rare earth metal neodymium for use in a permanent magnet made from the alloy neodymium-iron-boron. The total amount of neodymium produced annually in the USA is at most 600 tons, and all of it is used already to build nd-fe-b magnets for various applications. The current US installed capacity for electricity generation is 1,000 gigawatts (a gigawatt is 1000 megawatts), of which 0.6%, 6 gigawatts, is generated from wind turbines. The global annual production of neodymium, essentially all of which is mined in China, is today at an all time historical high of 26,500 metric tons.
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March 4, 2009
General Motors Hybrid Blitz halted by Lack of Batteries, Electric Motors | blogs.internetautoguide.com
The foolish article that I am analyzing here says that GM's only problem now is a shortage of batteries and electric (I assume, drive train) motors. The author's answer is simple: GM must build its own batteries and electric motors. The fact that such a resolution of GM's problems is impossible tells everyone except this author that GM is finished as an industry leading vehicle maker.
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March 3, 2009
Solar Panel Drops to $1 per Watt: Is this a Milestone or the Bottom for Silicon-Based Panels? | www.popularmechanics.com
There are two factors, which present obstacles that must be overcome if solar energy conversion is ever to be practical and widespread: 1. The limitations on the availability and/or production of the natural resources needed to manufacture the best currently known technologies, and 2. The comparative economics of "solar" energy conversion and all other alternate energy conversion technologies.
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March 2, 2009
Study Finds That Cars With Large Lithium-Ion Batteries Don't Provide the Best Value | www.allcarselectric.com
The economic meltdown has now exposed the plug-in lithium battery as a power train energy storage device to be far too early in its development and testing to be worth the risk for private capital. This doesn't mean that it should be developed by taxpayer generated funds; it means that we should step back and see just how we should allocate our resources of money, time, and people.
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February 23, 2009
The Electric Car Returns (and This Time It’s Personal) | commongroundmag.com
General Motors sole remaining iron foundry in Defiance, Ohio, is having two problems: 1. It is having difficulty meeting expanded production schedules for vehicles the production of which is supposedly tanking, and one emblamatic reason is that 2. Its suppliers of pig iron, the necessary raw material, won't give it credit.
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GM's Management Is Almost Restructured Already. It Just Needs Rick Wagoner To Leave
February 19, 2009
Reactions to Automakers’ Survival Plans | wheels.blogs.nytimes.com
Bob Lutz, A "car Guy" has now resigned as Vice Chairman and product "czar" of General Motors. He has already been replaced by a first class "car guy," more savvy than Lutz, Tom Stephens. Rick Wagoner, a finance guy whose best days are far in the past brought Fritz Henderson in as a finance guy whose best days may well be ahead of him. If the clueless politicians and their Wall Street toadies don't interfere then GM will shortly have a finance guy, Hendersen as CEO and a "car guy," Stephens as his partner to make a try at guiding GM out of the mess that it and the politicians have made of it during the last 25 years and more.
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February 18, 2009
Can We Build a Better Battery Without Lithium? | industry.bnet.com
The opacity of the world view of even MIT's materials' scientists is staggering. What exactly is meant by the statement that a natural resource is "earth fundamental?"
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February 17, 2009
How the Crash Will Reshape America | www.theatlantic.com
Overlooked in all of the angst over the future of the American OEM automotive industry is the effect this crisis is having on the city of Detroit. The once "Motor City" is now a shambles increasingly unable to maintain a level of basic services, police, fire, utilities and health, to name the most critical, necessary to making it liveable.
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Wouldn't A Hasty Transition To Renewable Energy Be Hazardous To Our Economic Health?
February 17, 2009
Saudi Oil Minister Warns Against Hasty Transition to Renewable Energy | redgreenandblue.org
Most of us view a Saudi Oil Minister's admonition to beware of a hasty transition to renewable sources of energy to be cynical and self-serving. But the fact is that such a profiund change done in haste would not only destroy the economy of a petrostate such as Saudi Arabia but could also dmage our own severely.
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February 6, 2009
The return of economic nationalism | www.economist.com
The economically suicidal stupidity of pretending that China nd India are emerging nations that can simply prohibit the export of natural resources either directly, or by allocation, or by levying export taxes that cause their prices to soar above those of the world market is doing, exactly as the Chinese, for one, intended, it is driving manufacturing requiring those resources along with its associated technology to China and India. Of course, if those same natural resources, were produced in the USA it would safeguard American jobs and technology from forced export, but this simple solution is too confusing for simple minded politicians and self righteous protectors of the environment who value trees above the quality of life of those who they seem to consider, by their actions, the lower classes.
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February 6, 2009
Change must be more than political if we're to survive | www.explorehoward.com
At the rate of production achieved for base, precious, and minor metals in 2007, the most productive year in history for new metal production it would not be possible, even if the population were to remain static, to produce enough raw materials and maintain the current production of energy from non--renewable resources to provide sufficient raw materials to give everyone on earth the same material standard of living as is currently enjoyed by the average American in less than fifty years. The problem is that only incremental increases in production can be achieved now with the extarction and refining technologies we have. Private capital may not be large enough to tackle mining in or under the sea or mining much lower gradse than we do now.
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A Nobel Prize Winner Flunks History
February 5, 2009
California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, U.S. energy secretary warns | www.latimes.com
California has perhaps 400 times as many people today as it did in 1800 Its farms and vineyards and its cities have been won from the desert at great cost and with great engineering and overcoming of climate adversity. Only an academic with his head in the clouds could fail to see that Californians will adapt to any climate change just as they have done before.
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Tesla, As An Example, May be Small Enough But Chrysler is Not Small Enough To Survive With No Sales
February 4, 2009
Chrysler sales plunge 55 pct; GM, Toyota also down | www.forbes.com
The UAW never foresaw this situation, so it has made the fixed cost for an OEM car maker so high that the company simply cannot survive without sales. In the distant past glory days of the OEM American automotive industry the managers could face down the union and try to "break the union" by locking it out until the men might literally begin to starve. Then we got, deservedly so, the Union, unemployment compensation, and pensions, healthcare and life insurance, and even social security. The bosses then took another tack; they simply gave the workers whatever they asked for and passed the costs on to their customers. There was no competition then; there was a monopoly as Mr. Tucker found out and later Mr. DeLorean found out also. Now we have competition keeping the prices down and the Unions asking for more and more, so are we at the end game? No siree now the benevolent government is sudsidizing a new round of "bankrupt the country" by supporting near zombie companies.
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Ford's Management Is Far More Competent And Engineering Savvy Than GM's
February 3, 2009
Ford to build plug-in in 2012 It is to make 5,000 a year; utilities are to test version of Escape | www.freep.com
Boeing is holding up the rollout of its next generation fuel efficient "Dreamliner" because it isn't yet a fully integrated system; i.e., some of the parts are not yet finalized. They have been designed, delivered, and installed, but they didn't perform as requested, so they have been sent back for redesign, redelivery, and restesting in actual conditions. General Motors, as if by contrast, took the word of a few academic battery researchers, just a couple of years ago, that, since theoretically a battery based on lithium ion chemistry should outperform all other battery technologies based on higher atomic weight elements such as nickel and lead, they should simply announce that such a battery "would" be built and installed in a car made by them. It, the theoretical construct, would then become a game changer. No one at Boeing could possibly be dumb enough to bet their company on such airy-fairy nonsense. It took a GM to do that. Ford is now doing as Boeing would do.
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February 2, 2009
James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic - Says Hansen ‘Embarrassed NASA’, ‘Was Never Muzzled’, & Models ‘Useless’ | wattsupwiththat.com
Respected and credentialed scientists have begun to speak out on anthropogenic global warming as an example of poor science, at best unproven and at worst wrong or even fraudulent.
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There May Well be A Good Reason To Keep GM, Chrysler, And Ford Alive Through The Worldwide Recession
January 28, 2009
44% Say Global Warming Due To Planetary Trends, Not People | www.rasmussenreports.com
I have not been shy about expressing my opinion that GM and Chrysler need to go bankrupt immediately if they are to have any hope of surviving. The question is: What, of value to anyone, might survive a GM and Chrysler bankruptcy? The answer is that there is still time to salvage the engineering skills and continuity from a century of designing, engineering, and building nearly a billion motor vehicles.
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Fuel Cells For Cars With Current Technology Are a Non Starter Due To Natural Resource Limitations
January 22, 2009
Handed the Keys to An Alternative Future | wheels.blogs.nytimes.com
The fuel cell in the Honda Clarity is the source of electricity for the electric motors that drive the car. The fuel for the fuel cell is hydrogen gas, which can be plentifully produced either by the simple electrolysis of water or by chemical processing of natural gas or ammonia both of which chemicals are widely distributed throughout our society. Why then is no one moving to create a hydrogen production and distribution system so that fuel cells of the type used by the Honda Clarity can be mass produced? It's simple; there isn't enough platinum to make such a move practical now or ever.
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January 21, 2009
GM to spend $30 million on Volt battery plant | www.reuters.com
LG, the Korean conglomerate, will save a great deal of money by having its lithium-ion batteries, chosen as OEM equipment for the Chevrolet Volt, assembled and tested in the USA. General Motors, the end-user of the LG batteries, will be able to forego what it cannot do itself; i.e., build a factory in the USA to manufacture lithium-ion battery cells. GM has neither the technology nor the money for such an undertaking. GM brings to the table high priced, inexperienced, UAW labor, but when the cost of building a battery factory and developing a technology is factored in then it turns out that the USA has become the low labor cost country and that GM and LG are both getting bargains.
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