GLG News by 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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The Volt isn't a Prius. It Is A Cobbled Together Overhyped Attempt To Re-Invent General Motors
September 19, 2008
The Volt Isn't A Prius. It Might Even Be Better | blog.wired.com
The Chevrolet Volt, if it is brought to market too early, will fail both in its intended use and in its operation. -
September 17, 2008
Power Plays | online.wsj.com
There are two non-silicon chemistries now being hyped as the bases for thin-film solar cells: 1. Cadmium telluride, and 2. Copper Indium Gallium Selenide Neither is practical at all. -
September 15, 2008
G.M. at 100: Is Its Future Electric? | www.nytimes.com
The future of the personal automobile is in the gasoline or kerosene(diesel) burning internal combustion engine. Future cars will be small, lightweight, and get 50 MPG and more. The Toyota prius hybrid already gets 50 MPG right off the showroom floor. This is why Toyota is increasing the production of the Prius to 3000 a day by 2011. But there is only so much lanthanum metal produced. If all of it produced today were used for manufacturing the nickel metal hydride batteries for the Prius then the production could go to 2,000,000 cars a year. This is around 2% of the world's 2010 projected car and truck combined production. -
Is This The Beginning Of The End For Chinese Domination Of The Production Of Rare Earths?
September 15, 2008
Chevron selling rare earth mining operations | www.bizjournals.com
Is a rare earth mining boomlet under way? -
September 8, 2008
Manufacturers turn to US | www.ft.com
Incredibly American states from which manufacturing jobs were lost by the hundreds of thousands over the last few years are bribing foreign heavy industry, the very industry that we were told by Wall Street was 'obsolete in the modern globalized American service economy, to set up manufacturing plants in the US. These bribes are referred to in the new economic doublespeak as "subsidies." -
Recalls: The True Costs of Outsouricng Both The Part And The Quality Control
September 1, 2008
GM recalling 944,000 vehicles | www.forbes.com
The Detroit Three followed the lead of Jacques Nasser at Ford in the early 1990s and began to eliminate internal supplier quality management and PPAP, production parts approval processes. After internal engineering supplier monitoring had been made into a supplier self approval regime came the outsourcing frenzy of the late 1990s. The result was that Chinese and Indian suppliers were self certifying and that has been a disaster. -
Bob Lutz Seems to Have Learned Doublespeak From George Orwell. Failure is Success, Says Lutz.
August 29, 2008
Carmakers Deserve Loan Guarantees, G.M. Official Says | www.nytimes.com
On what basis do OEM American carmakers deserve federal loan guarantees? Is it because their legacy costs weren't their own fault? Is it because they made lower quality vehicles than their foreign competitors? Is it because they sent American jobs overseas so that the unemployed workers they created could no longer afford to buy their overpriced cars? Is it because they use the money they earn overseas to fund further expansion overseas and thus move closer to no longer being American companies at all? Is it because they continue to employ and pay high salaries to legacy managers who have proven themselves completely inept and have cumulatively lost more than 100 billion dollars in just the last five year? It is for all of the above and many more reasons that the OEM American car companies must be allowed to go it on their own. -
Minor Metals Markets Are Not Transparent And Hedging Non Exchange Traded Metals Requires Great Skill
August 26, 2008
Can One Man’s Actions Take $6 Billion In Value Out Of A Minor Metal Market In A Month? | www.resourceinvestor.com
End users of minor metals for critical purposes, i.e., for purposes that are not economically or technologically possible without a particular minor metal, can hedge the required supply of metal by financing the producer's output, through offtake agreements, for example, and by being the buyer of last resort as well as the holder of a small strategic excess inventory to use as a barrier against a speculative corner. Contrary to that type of reasoning the unskilled and inexperienced trader in this story simply tried to extend his company's inventory out as far as he could as a way to manage supply interruption. He miscalculated badly and only achieved an enormous cost increase when he was actually trying to stabilize a supply. -
August 20, 2008
Chrysler Sues Johnson Controls For $15M In Overcharges | online.wsj.com
In just this year Cerberus' accountants may have inadvertently exposed the seamy side of cost cutting in the American OEM automtoive industry: 1. Overcharging by non-competitive politically correct suppliers, 2. Underbidding by suppliers desparate to keep their own factories open, and now 3. Short-weighting of exchange traded commodities. Doesn't this expose the corrupt core of OEM automotive cost accounting in general? -
Is Palladium Overpriced Even At Less Than $300/Ounce?
August 18, 2008
Timminco CEO Blamed For Norilsk Woes | www.financialpost.com
If we believe the news out of Russia then there must be palladium aplenty residing in the vaults of, or under the control of, Norilsk, the world's largest palladium producer. -
August 14, 2008
Hybrid race heats up for carmakers | www.ft.com
General Motors may not actually have a plan to compete with Toyota in the hybrid market. General Motors engineering and purchasing was disastrously shortsighted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and its product planning group remains so even now. All of GM's product planning and sourcing errors were made under the rule of Rick Wagoner. GM's board of directors either doesn't understand carmaking or fears for its own reputation and job, or that it has no one to turn to, if it now jettisons Wagoner and his team. GM is thus doomed to fail and the money being wasted chasing the short term lithium rainbow is just accelerating GM's demise. -
The Age of Dollar Priced Metals Is Drawing To a Close and Perspective is The Key To Objectivity
August 13, 2008
Metals prices dive as dollar rallies | business.timesonline.co.uk
Is it ridiculous to assume that a marked change in the value of the US dollar in relation to the resource backed currencies of all or even some of the BRAC countries, Brazil, Russia, Australia, and Canada, will not affect the immediate dollar price of the natural resources produced in those countries.. -
August 12, 2008
Stocks Gain as Oil’s Fall Continues | www.nytimes.com
Gold has no utilitarian value whatsoever. Oil, however, is intrinsically the single most valuable commodity in the world and will remain so until the production of electric energy and the fueling of ordinary passenger and freight carrying vehicles in a nation no longer uses more oil than that nation using the oil can produce for itself. It is simply not possible today for a nation to be economically self sufficient without either producing or burning oil for energy. The possession of gold or even of any utilitarian commodity without oil is today without real value. -
August 8, 2008
Mercedes May Cancel Hybrid SUV Plan Due To Chevron Dispute | www.informationweek.com
Mercedes is leading the green charge in European luxury cars. It is bringing its Bluetec diesel engines to the market to improve fuel efficiency and lower emissions for its premium cars. Mercedes also keeps talking about a plug-in hybrid using a 'lithium' battery that is supposed to be coming soon. So, why is Mercedes thinking of canceling an SUV hybrid targeted for the US market because it won't be getting the nickel metal hydride vehicles it made a prepayment for from now moribund Cobasys? -
Obama, Like GM, Does't Lack Inexperience In The Management of Scientific and Engineering Enterprises
August 6, 2008
Obama: 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2015 | www.autobloggreen.com
Liberal politicians and overpaid executives seem to have exactly the same solution to all problems whether they be environmental, cultural, or scientific: Throw somebody elses's money at them. Isn't it obvious that the presently touted solutions to old problems may not be the correct ones? Isn't it obvious that simply downsizing vehicles, building public transportation, and encouraging multiple passenger driving, should be the very first way to go to reduce fuel consumption? Isn't it also obvious that the indulgence of the American consumer in his/her fantasy of large fast cars as a measure of self-esteem along with telling gullible people that they always need the newest version of a car are the actual impediments to rationalizing transportation? After doing all of those things perhaps we will still have time to advance our technology through innovation. Americans need industrial and political leaders not judas goats as managers and elected officials. -
Ford Executive Inadvertently(?) Sinks The Chevrolet Volt; The Lady's Logic Is Tough To Refute."
July 24, 2008
Ford mass plug-ins at least 5 years away | uk.reuters.com
As James Carville might say to GM's Bob Lutz, "It's the battery, stupid, we don't have enough reliability and longevity data to put it on the market. That'll take at least five years after we finally choose a specific technology based in great part on initial reliability and longevity testing which is not yet completed!" Toyota and Honda have chosen the nickel-metal-hydride battery equipped hybrid for mass production while continuing to evaluate lithium technologies for future plug-in hybrids. -
July 22, 2008
China urged to spend FX on mines, resources | uk.reuters.com
Reuter's has now reported the official statement of a ranking official of China's Ministry of Economics, http://gateway.andohs.net/player/?sid=826&nid=2920 , to the effect that China's treasury must follow Chinese 'private' business and use its immense reserves of US dollars to obtain ownership of natural resources and of their sources of production overseas. China admits that it stands to lose more by simply holding American currency and dollar denominated negotiable instruments than any other nation in the world if the US dollar declines. But never before has the global economy been faced with a buyer of China's demand and wealth, as a competitor for natural resources. The Chinese nation and its treasury are primarily ranged against foreign private companies. Has the struggle I have in the past referred to as "The Gold War' begun? -
July 21, 2008
Wind Power: Turbine Time | www.economist.com
Wind turbines can be used to produce electricity but in order to do so they must use permanent magnets and batteries. Building even the 'modest' 17 gigawatts of wind power generated electricity that Texas alone projects would add so much demand for rare earth metals as to be impossible to carry out in the face of present growth in Chinese domestic demand for rare earth metals. -
Toyota Solves Hybrid Problems In a Remarkably More CLever Way Than General Motors Does
July 9, 2008
Toyota to add solar panels to some Prius hybrids | www.washingtonpost.com
In order to maximize the range of a hybrid or all electric car it is important to minimize the drain on the battery from any load but that of the drive train. -
Short Selles of Solar Cell Raw Materials Stocks Seem To be Wriitng The News
July 7, 2008
Solar power: Supply and demand tables start to turn | www.ft.com
This article seems mostly nonsense to me. It is poorly researched and seems to conflate different solar technologies and their problems with one another in a purposefully confusing way.
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