GLG News by Mr. Jack Lifton, Co-founder and Director
GLG News is now G+ Insights
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G+ is a community for professionals, academics and entrepreneurs to connect through online discussions and in-person meetings. You will continue to see G+ Insights (formerly GLG News) here as well as on the G+ website, where you can share and discuss the G+ Insights you read.
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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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January 19, 2009
Jack Lifton: The Technology Metals Age | seekingalpha.com
Recycling of municipal trash is today , in the Western world, is primarily just a political ploy focused on household trash, which when undifferentiated (unprepared as the scrap industry calls it) has no intrinsic value. In countries like the USA all of the big money in recycling such trash is made from the pickup, transportation, landfill, burning, or overseas shipping fees. Nothing at all is made from the recovery of metal values from such scrap. It is a gigantic scam perpetuated by those who collect all of the fees. Any special metals, either precious or technology, are recovered in low labor cost countries, if at all, by processses which are uneconomical and dangerous under Western rules and regulations. Industrial recycling is by contrast often and mostly too narrowly focused. Ferrous scrap, for example, is processed almost solely for its iron (steel) content, and the value of contained minor metals is usually overlooked or, worse, wasted. This cannot continue.
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More Public Relations Double Talk About Lithium Ion Battery Production in Michigan
January 13, 2009
GM unveils battery plan, may need more loans | www.forbes.com
We are now to believe that the greatest destroyer of corporate wealth in American business history, The General Motors Corporation, will, without any money or technology of its own, be singlehandedly creating the core of an "American" lithium ion battery industry by inviting the Korean Electronics Company, LG, to make lithium ion battery cells in Korea and bring them to Michigan for assembly into 'packs' large enough to power a Chevrolet Volt. Michigan's governor can hardly contain her enthusiasm and neither can the Corporate Wealth Destroyer All-Time-Champion, "GM's Rick Wagoner, who on his watch has overseen GM's market capitalization decline by 95% while he also ignored completely the electrification of cars until just recently when he devised a plan to jump start GM's alternate energy power train agenda by going two steps ahead of Toyota without the background, experience, or skill of that competitor. Is the result to be the further erosion of American industry?
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Absolute Nonsense From Korea About The Global Lithium Supply
January 12, 2009
Lithium for Second Battery Will Dry Up in 16 Years | english.etnews.co.kr
The claim that there is insufficient lithium accessible to support the electrification of small passenger carrying vehicles is false. The claim is made most likely for the purpose of affecting the price of shares in lithium mining ventures or the price of lithium metal or lithium chemicals.
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January 12, 2009
Toyota to Sell Tiny U.S. ‘Urban Commuter’ Battery Car by 2012 | www.bloomberg.com
Toyota's engineers believe that at its present state of development the lithium ion battery can only be scaled up from laptop powering size to, at most, a size that will safely power a 2 passenger car for a 50 mile run before needing a recharge. Today the state-of-the-lithium-ion-battery development is such that it is only useful in a limited temperature and load (weight carrying) range. Toyota has therefore decided only for marketing reasons to introduce now a small passenger carrying commuter vehicle powered by the safest most durable and long lived lithium-ion batteries it, itself, Toyota, has so far developed. Toyota's caution highlights GM's desperation.
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January 9, 2009
Battery Makers Target Forklift Market | www.greentechmedia.com
There are necessary steps to scaling up a technology. The passenger car makers either do not know what they are doing or are competing with each other in hypocrisy. In either case it will be years before any lithium ion battery technology is proven to be durable, rugged, safe, and long lived in applications requiring cells larger than those used today for laptop computers. Accelerated testing is notoriously unreliable for battery technology testing, because too many unknown factors and their interactions can only be measured in real time by prototype production units. The scale up of nickel metal hydride batteries with only small variations in their chemistry has now been going on for a decade. Nickel metal hydride batteries have performed very well. No single lithium ion battery chemistry has yet been tested in real time for more than a year in vehicle size prototype. Kawasaki is concerned with known failure modes, and has chosen NiMH batteries to minimize its risk.
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January 7, 2009
Auto Industry Growth at Dead End | www.thebigmoney.com
It is not at all surprising that the American owned and operated OEM automotive industry has declined domestically nor should it be a surprise that the foreign owned segment of that industry is now also declining. There is no point at all to manufacturing purposely short-lived durable assets in the USA. Ruthless competition for raw materials and energy coupled with a surplus of low cost labor overseas have propelled unit costs of producing durable goods in the USA to an all time high. The OEM American automotive industry has not had an easy let-down; it has had shocks from the withdrawal of easy credit to the foolish consumer class that finally had to be drawn from the totally unqualified just to keep up the fantasy of open ended growth. Now comes the reconciliation of what we can do with the resources we have modified by what should we do. Government can only address the second part of the question. The laws of supply and demand will give the answer to the first part.
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December 29, 2008
Toyota delays Mississippi assembly plant | www.msnbc.msn.com
Toyota has both manufacturing and financial flexibility perhaps more so than any other OEM automotive assembler on earth. But even Toyota cannot afford to continue a marketing strategy laid low by external factors it did not foresee. The American credit market has been stopped dead in its tracks by greed, short sightedness, unethical, and illegal behavior. If the American economy is to be brought back to an even keel in a way to insure that it remains there then it will be necessary to reduce both the size and power of cars made in America no matter who owns the companies that make them. Oil is going to be more expensive in dollar terms in the future than it has ever before been in American history. Foreign demand for oil and oil products, such as plastics, will rapidly erode America's per capita domination of oil-use statistics, and the first statistic that will have to change is average miles per gallon for noncommercial use. The age of the small car has arrived.
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December 22, 2008
Platinum Falls to Gold's Level | online.wsj.com
The global OEM automotive industry is going to double in size by 2015. The electrification of cars will develop slowly, if at all. Therefore the demand for platinum group metals for exhaust emission catalysis will also double by 2015. The prinicpal power train growth will be in diesel and turbodiesel. Unless there is a game-changing innovation in exhaust emission catalysis this will demand much more platinum that is in use today.
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