GLG News by Mining Experts

Bradford MillsChief Executive OfficerMANDALAY RESOURCES CORPORATION

The Platinum Supply is set to decline in 2009 - Will it be enough to rebalance supply?

January 5, 2009

Analysis of:Russia Norilsk to cut nickel, palladium output | www.reuters.com

The demand for Platinum has fallen sharply in the last several months and with it the prices of platinum, palladium and Rhodium. In the face of these sharp price falls, producers are delaying capital spending, cutting projects and  closing marginal mines. To date these supply cuts amount to some 400,000 ounce of annual Platinum production in 2009 or some 5-6%  of annual supply. Will these cuts be enough to rebalance supply/demand fundamentals in 2009?

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Toyota may Not Ever Complete Its Planned Mississippi Assembly Plant, And It May Close Some Of Its Other American Plants Permanently

December 29, 2008

Analysis of: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.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

For the Global OEM Automotive Industry Today's Platinum Group Metals' Prices Are a Paradise Soon To Be Lost And Never Again Regained.

December 22, 2008

Analysis of: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.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

The Nickel Metal Hydride Battery For Hybrid Vehicles Is An Outstanding Time-Proven Example Of Engineering; There Is No Evidence At All, So Far,That The Lithium-Ion Battery Will Measure Up

December 17, 2008

Analysis of:Long-Lived, but Not Immortal: Fears Fade on Hybrid Batteries | www.nytimes.com

The success of the nickel metal hydride utilizing hybrid power train is one of the truly outstanding successes of Japanese automotive engineering, and it demonstrates clearly the short sightedness of American OEM automotive management. The nickel metal battery was invented in a suburban Detroit laboratory by a company, Energy Conversion Devices, Inc, which was at the time looking for a material to store hydrogen in the solid state. The idea was to create a safe hydrogen 'fuel tank' for vehicles. At that time the nickel cadmium rechargeable battery was  being discontinued for reasons of he toxicity of cadmium. ECD decided to try a developmental hydrogen 'alloy' in place of the cadmium, and the rest is history. The new rechargeable battery was offered to GM, but it was not as capable as an electric car traction battery as lead-acid so GM lost interest. Toyota however had another idea, the hybrid battery electric/ internal combustion drive. The rest is also history.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Why Has Toyota Slowed Down Its Agenda To Build Its Best Selling Prius In North America?

December 16, 2008

Analysis of:Toyota delays Mississippi assembly plant | www.forbes.com

The Prius line of best selling hybrids in the world is due to be expanded next month with the introduction of several new models at the Detroit 'International" Auto Show. Most of the Priuses made are now sold are sold in North America. The Prius is only built in Japan. The nickel metal hydride battery (NiMH), used for the Prius,  based on a rare earth metal (lanthanum) alloy with nickel and cobalt, is made only in Japan by Toyota.   Has Toyota been looking for an excuse not to build the Prius in North America? Was the genral sales slowdown too good an excuse not to use?

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Ford's Fusion Hybrid With Its Advanced Nickel Metal Hydride Battery May Crush The Chevrolet Volt

December 15, 2008

Analysis of:First Drive: 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid | www.autoblog.com

While GM ignored the success of the Toyota Prius apparently for no other reason than that they wanted the public to believe that it wasn't invented here Ford decided to watch and learn. Ford has now reached the point where it about to challenge Toyota and Honda for a place in the hybrid sun.   There is no longer much point to continuing the development of the Chevrolet Volt, or, for that matter, to continuing the existence of GM as an incompetent and  bloated bureaucracy with far too much production capacity for making cars that no one wants to buy.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Are The Capabilities and Capacities, And Thus The General Utility, of Electric And Hybrid Cars Limited?

December 12, 2008

Analysis of:Green Obama’s official limo is a gas guzzler | www.timesonline.co.uk

Battery powered utility vehicles such as industrial forklift trucks and the 'traction' motors that pull 100 ton+ airplanes into and out of their 'parking' slots at airports are very impressive. However, to put forward the idea that there is a comparison between and a possibility of utilizing them to replace any part of the huge fleet of diesel and gasoline engine powered freight carrying trucks that keep the commerce of the USA and the rest of the world flowing is very misleading. It's time to take a deep breath and to look at what electric vehicles and hybrids cannot do in our motorized society.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Toyota's Business Model is The Reason That Detroit Should Not be Bailed Out

December 10, 2008

Analysis of:Toyota Tsusho Launches Rare Earth Business | www.toyota-tsusho.com

There is a simple reason that Toyota has grown steadily over the last 25 years from a maker of low quality inexpensive cars for the Japanese domestic market into the world's largest and most profitable-from the sale of vehicles-auto maker. The reason is long term planning coupled with continuous feedback sought from its customers on how to improve its products.   No matter what is said about the management of General Motors it, the arrogant and self-absorbed and self perpetuating group that has run GM for more than 25 years has failed miserably to even notice how Toyota achieved its success. Now in league with politicians bought and paid for by union interests the pathetic management of GM having exhausted its right to a seat at the free market capitalist table will apparently simply continue on as a nationalized company until finally it cannot sell anything and simply disintegrates on the same day as its 3rd or 4th government handout is finally refused.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Not All Metals Are Commodities. Critical Ones Must be Recycled No Matter What The Cost.

December 9, 2008

Analysis of:Back at junk value, recyclables are piling up | www.iht.com

As finite supplies of critical raw materials are used up or squandered in dissipative uses from which they cannot be economically recovered their supply becomes more and more price sensitive. Many minor metals are for this reason rapidly becoming more valuable even though this fact has been masked by the blind attempt of the investment community to class all metals as 'commodities" and to denigrate their value and to simplify ignorantly the amount of work necessary to restore their production.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

GM's Volt Project Depends For Its Success On The Notoriously Secretive Asian Battery Industry, Which Will Not Make A Battery Outside of Their Asian Home Countries In Order To Maximize Competitive Advantage. How Then Can Rick Wagoner, Or His Successor, Know When Or If GM Will EVER Get A Working Battery System?

December 8, 2008

Analysis of:Short Supply: American-made Electric Car Batteries | www.evworld.com

General Motors has failed completely to support its local nickel metal hydride battery maker, COBASYS. Earlier this year when Chevron, one of the joint partners in (C) Chevron (O) Ovonic (BA) Battery (SYS) Systems said it would no longer fund the unbroken annual losses of COBASYS and that its partner, Energy Conversion Devices, Inc, was free to do so on its own, it looked as if COBASYS would soon be gone, since ECD admitted it did not have 88 million dollars to cover COBASYS' expected deficit for fiscal 2008-9. General Motors leaped into the fray and said that it would buy out Chevron and ECD's interest in COBASYS and that it, GM, would use the company ultimately as an intake center for lithium-ion batteries. This hasn't happened. COBASYS batteries for the 2007 model year of GM's hybrids were 100% recalled, so the idea of putting this failed company in charge of li-ion battery quality control seemed lame even to those who still believe GM's PR about the Chevrolet Volt.

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