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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Germanium And Gallium Byproducts Of Zinc Mining Go from No value To Value Added
July 7, 2008
SRA agrees germanium and gallium leachate supply deals | www.semiconductor-today.com
Minor metal byproducts of major 'base' metals, which were discarded as waste or for which the mine did not get paid by the refiner are rapidly growing in importance and may represent enough added value to allow for the re-opening of marginal mines. -
July 1, 2008
Wipers, Stereo Raise Price of Chevrolet Volt to $35,000 | blog.wired.com
Is GM planning to introduce and sell the Chevrolet Volt in November, 2010, at a loss? Probably. Even 'Maximum' Bob Lutz admits that the car might sell at a loss 'for many years.' The irreducible costs are not in the raw materials for a lithium ion battery. Lithium is actually rather cheap. They are instead in the manufacturing costs for the battery and in the cost of re-engineering the car's electrical accessories so that they don't drain the battery to where the vehicles' performance is compromised. -
Aren't GM's, And Ford's and Chrysler's, Problems All The Same: Bad Management From The Top Down?
July 1, 2008
GM's Maximum Bob: Don't tell me how to make an E-car | latimesblogs.latimes.com
For the last ten years as the center of the OEM automotive industry's growth has shifted to mainland Asia we have heard nothing but failure-excusing buzz words from the 'leaders' of the OEM American automotive industry. Legacy costs, health care, and, just now, as they finally admit it, raw material costs, are mantras endlessly repeated without a moment's hesitation by the highest paid managers in American OEM automotive history as the companies they mismanage continue on in the longest profitless period in American OEM automotive history. Isn't it obvious that Wall Street has simply abandoned the American OEM automotive industry to its own devices and fate? -
The North American Minor Metals Market Disaster in the Age of Minor Metals
June 23, 2008
UPDATE 2-Toshiba looks to procure metals from Kazakhstan | uk.reuters.com
Survival of their nation's industrial base and industrial independence has sent Japanese companies on a hunt for critical natural resources. When will American's wake up to the damage to out domestic economy that ignoring this issue has already caused and the impending disaster if we do nothing about it? -
June 23, 2008
Deepening gloom at General Motors | money.cnn.com
The market capitalization of the Detroit Two (Chrysler having been privatized by Cerberus is no longer a public company with a transparent market 'cap.') is a grand total of less than 20 billion dollars with GM accounting for an astonishingly tiny 8 billion of that. Toyota, which is in fact the world's largest viable car company due to the fact that its profit alone is more each year than GM's market capitalization has a market cap of more than $160 billion. There is no reason, other than nostalgia, for GM today to be in the Dow Jones Industrial Average at all. It has the smallest market cap, in fact, of any of the 30 members of the average, and the market cap of the two largest, General Electric and Microsoft are each more than 25 times the market cap of GM. Exxon Mobil, another DJIA member, made more profit last quarter than GM's market cap. The steady march of GM to bankruptcy is simply now unavaoidable, Volt or no Volt. -
Rhenium, Without Which There Would Be No Modern Jet Aircraft, Is A Byproduct Of Molybdenum Mining
June 20, 2008
Minor metal prices soar on demand for more fuel-efficient jet engines | www.ft.com
Luckily for the free world the US is the world's largest producer of the metal molybdenum. Rhenium is contained as trace element in both the primary molybdenum ore mined in North America-which is responsible for 40% of North American molybdenum production-and in the molybdenum itself contained as a byproduct in America's copper ores. Because the US is self sufficient in molybdenum it is also probably self sufficient in rhenium, approximately 40 tons of the world's annual production of 125 tons of the metal are recovered in North American mining operations. But there is a chance that there is much more rhenium in North America. -
June 19, 2008
Electro-Shock Therapy | www.theatlantic.com
The GM EV1 battery powered car, which used lead-acid batteries, went 90 miles at 60 miles an hour on an overnight charge. It was discontinued nearly 20 years ago for lack of customer interest, said GM, at the time. What advantage does the 2010 or 2011 Chevrolet Volt have over this 20 year old technology? -
June 17, 2008
Lithium-ion batteries power converted Priuses | www.autoweek.com
It is impossible to believe that either Toyota or lithium battery developer A123 think its a good idea to modify an existing Prius into a plug-in hybrid by having a dealer install a system based on an A123 battery. Toyota cannot stop its independent dealers from charging gullible environmental activist drivers of the Prius for charging them $10,000.00 to void their car's warranty absolutely. A123 has clearly not thought this through. If 1000 'conversions' are carried out and one fails due to battery failure then the Chevrolet Volt program could be an instant failure before it starts. In addition each Prius sitting in a dealer shop waiting for lithium battery or plug-in system repair will be indistinguishable from a failed Prius based on existing reliable nickel metal hydride battery technology. Finally, the complaints of the owners, not only about the huge costs and delays in getting service but in not getting the promised mileage will be national headlines. -
June 5, 2008
Prius sales tank in May, Toyota blames battery supply | www.autoblog.com
Toyota and Honda have both announced in the last month that they will use nickel metal hydride batteries in their hybrid vehicles for the near term, at least for the next five years, and perhaps well beyond that. Toyota has also announced that it will dramatically ramp up nickel metal hydride battery production so that it can ramp up hybrid vehicle production. Toyota will be introducing a new more powerful Prius power train along with several new additions to the Prius 'family' of vehicles in january, 2009. Honda has announced that it will in 2009 be introducing its new nickel metal hydride powered Prius fighter small hybrid car in late 2009. Why then did Toyota say that the drop in Prius sales last month was due to a lack of batteries? Could Toyota purchasing have made such an error , or is something much bigger happening? -
June 3, 2008
British win orders back from China | www.ft.com
Quality, on time delivery, and price used to be the three factors to be judged, and in that order of descending importance, by OEM automotive buyers. Then the accountants took over and simply dismissed those with engineering and materials evaluation skills as commodities whose opinions and recommendations were of little value. In doing so they destroyed the American OEM automotive industry's ability to compete, probably permanently. -
June 2, 2008
Is there a Prius in the future for Nummi? GM, Toyota in talks to build hybrid at Fremont plant, Tokyo paper says | www.sfgate.com
Toyota only builds the Prius hybrid, the world's best selling hybrid, in Japan even though nearly 80% of the Prius production is sold in the USA. Why is this so? And, why, now that Toyota is committed to nearly tripling the production of Priuses worldwide by 2011, is it that the batteries and power trains for the Prius, as well as for every other hybrid Toyota, will be built only in Japan even if some of the hybrids are assembled outside of Japan, for example in California? -
Toyota Marginalizes GM's Volt By Announcing Plans To Ramp Up Nickel Metal Hydride Battery Capacity
May 27, 2008
Toyota, Matsushita to Build Hybrid-Battery Plants, Nikkei Says | www.bloomberg.com
Toyota is 1. Increasing the production capacity of its existing original joint venture plant with Matsushita (Panasonic) to make nickel metal hydride, NiMH, batteries for hybrid vehicles, 2. Building an additional new nickel metal hydride battery plant with Matsushita, which, when combined with the original one's expansion will give it a NiMH production capacity of 1 million units a year by 2011, and 3. Building a plant to make lithium-ion batteries for vehicles which by 2011 will have a capacity of "several tens of thousands" of such batteries a year. -
May 23, 2008
Cobasys' owners push for sale of battery maker | www.mlive.com
GM doesn't seem to understand battery technologies at all. Toyota's supplier of nickel metal hydride batteries has so far delivered more than 1 1/2 million of them for the Toyota hybrid fleet. Cobasys a joint venture between Chevron and Ovonic Materials-a spinoff of Energy Conversion Devices, which invented the nickel metal hydride battery-supplied GM's first hybrid models offered initially in the 2007 model year with batteries so poorly made that GM is recalling 100% of them. Cobasys took more than 5 years to achieve its level of complete incompetence and an investment of nearly $400 million dollars was totally wasted. Astoundingly GM is now believed to be ready to buy out Chevron and Ovonic from the failed j/v and, even more incredibly, to award a contract to test lithium batteries for the Chevrolet Volt to the dolts at Cobasys. But, to give GM credit, such a buyout would allow it to cover up this monumental failure of lost opportunities. -
May 22, 2008
Trade in raw materials and commodities- MEPs concerned about supply | www.europarl.europa.eu
The USA has reduced its production of natural resources to below self-sufficiency not because of a lack of ore bodies or oil, gas, and coal, or the technology to recover lower grade resources efficiently and economically, but because of a cultish adherence to an environmentalism that refuses to recognize technological improvements in health, safety, and conservation in the production of natural resources and ignores economic reality to look back at a fantasy age during which the human race was better because it did not use oil, gas, coal or metal. This nonsense does not pervade the societies of Asia. -
Are The Auto Insurance Underwriters Ready For Lithium Batteries?
May 22, 2008
MythBusters Hack Go-Kart in Extreme Electric vs. Gas Test | www.popularmechanics.com
Lithium cobalt oxide batteries in the sizes needed for laptop computers have been known to overheat and even burst into flame. Lithium iron phosphate batteries are known to develop internal high pressures. If the car companies are not going to tell us which technology they have chosen for lithium batteries then how will the insurance companies be able to assess safety and set rates? -
Chrysler Is Playing Catch-Up, But The Game's Already Over
May 21, 2008
Chrysler seeks 25% slash in parts prices | www.autonews.com
The American OEM automotive industry bankrupted its supply base by demanding ever increasing price concessions while absconding with the uncapitalized value of its supply bases's technology and using the stolen technology to buy low labor costs from outsourced suppliers. GM led the parade of short sighted OEMs until Ford caught on and joined in. DaimlerChrysler was no where near as brainless and focused its outsourcing on eastern Europe where quality control could be monitored from Stuttgart and nearby locations and raw materials could be hedged. Now that Daimler is gone Chrysler is simply operating on half of a brain and looking more like Home Depot each day and thinks it can simply catch up with GM and Ford by squeezing blood from the turnips left over from the OEM automotive industry's supply base. -
America Should Learn a Lesson About Domestic Mining From Great Britain
May 21, 2008
Mines Could Reopen As Prices Soar | news.bbc.co.uk
Some archaeologists believe that the mediterranean bronze age was cut short, and superceeded, prematurely, by the iron age, by the refusal of Greek and Phoenician traders to take the financial risk of obtaining tin from the distant and dangerous 'tin isles,' known now as the British Isles. Now those same tin islanders will shortly be resuming production because of a new risk, the risk of not prospering from being able to supply natural resources domestically, which otherwise would have to be imported from unfriendly and, some would say, dangerous places far away. Do you suppose that America would ever figure out that the only reason that it does not produce its abundant domestic resources of both major and minor metals, which it has, is because of an anti-mining bias that is illogical in the extreme? -
Is Upgraded Metallurgical Grade Silicon The Only Hope For Manufacturers of Photovoltaic Solar Cells?
May 20, 2008
Capital's glowing feeling | www.theaustralian.news.com.au
Until fairly recently the source of solar grade silicon for manufacturers of photovoltaic solar cells was excess polycrystalline silicon from processes intended to produce ultra pure silicon for the production of electronic integrated circuits (chips). This was because the processes to purify and produce silicon as ultrahigh purity (99.9999+) single crystal 'ingots,' for slicing into 'wafers' themselves to be the base upon which integrated circuit chips were formed and then removed by slicing and dicing, were complex and slow and yields were never 100%. The waste, i.e. either polycrystalline material or that of less than ultra high purity, was sold as 'solar grade.' Lately a number of makers of ferrosilicon have announced that they have solved the problem of turning their 99.7% metallurgical silicon directly into 'solar grade' silicon by the ton. If this is true then silicon PV solar cells may become competitive with thin film cadmium telluride PV solar cells. -
Are Massive Price Increases In Store For American Car and Truck Buyers? Yes.
May 20, 2008
Valeo CEO: Rising costs should be passed to buyers | www.autonews.com
The American OEM automotive industry has studiously ignored all of the market's warning signals and forced its supply base to absorb the raw material price increases stemming from huge Asian demand and a falling dollar. This was done out of fear of being priced out of their own domestic market as well as from short sighted attention only to their share prices. The day of reckoning cannot be put off any longer not only because of increased commodity prices and a weak dollar but also because the cash-strapped American OEM's cannot afford the burden of the hugely expensive new technologies, which they must implement beginning now to satisfy the arbitrary legal limits on emission and increased fuel economy forced upon them by politicians with no equal on earth for short sightedness and ignorance of economics and of the economic consequences of their actions. -
Has A Massive Inflation Due To Commodity Prices Begun? Probably, Yes.
May 15, 2008
U.S. Supplier Plans Commodity Surcharge | www.just-auto.com
The American OEM automotive industry bankrupted its supply base in the last decade by refusing to accept price increases for commodities and specialty metals caused by huge increases in the demand for them from Asia. The OEM American automotive industry then replaced its bankrupt suppliers by outsourcing their work to Asia where low labor rates, for a time, masked the increases in raw material prices. Now with rising Asian labor rates, strategic and critical metals monopolized by Chinese located or owned sources, and the quality of Chinese durable goods rising American OEM heavy industry sees its days of being able to compete with global competition, even in the US domestic market, vanishing. In order to be able to get commodities no longer produced in the US American OEM heavy industry will have to pay the full price directly. Prices formerly subsidized by losses on the balance sheets of suppliers now have to marked to market. Inflation is on the way.
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