GLG News by Scrap Metal Experts
-
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
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
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
December 8, 2008
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.
-
Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC
December 8, 2008
Revolutionary Wheel for Electric Cars Puts Guts Inside Wheel | gas2.org
One powered wheel and a battery of any type can make a motorbike, two powered wheels and a battery of any type can make a powered freight or passenger carrying cart, three or more powered wheels and a battery of any type can make a car, 8, or more, can make a truck, and with a third rail or an overhead wire connection 8 or more can make a bus, passenger carrying railcar, freight carrying railcar, subway car, etc. The size of the wheel and of its contained motors can be increased to make long haul freight or passenger carrying vehicles.
-
Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC
November 10, 2008
Automakers struggle to survive past mistakes | www.forbes.com
Three years ago a former Chairman of an American OEM automotive company told me that the problem with GM, Ford, and Chrysler was that they all believed originally that the Japanese would never learn how to make cars that Americans would buy, and, then, after that turned out to be false they simply decided that there was nothing to be learned from the Japanese who must have been successful, they thought, simply by emulating them. These men, and they were and are all men, are myopic and incompetent. It is their fault as much as the fault of the monopolistic union that the domestic American OEM car companies and their supply base have failed. Let's please get rid of them immediately.
-
Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC
November 10, 2008
Auto-Industry Crisis Tests Obama | online.wsj.com
The backbone of American manufacturing is made up of profitable, high-productivity companies in a variety of industries, which create or find a way to manufacture the latest and most relevant technologies for our health, safety, workplace productivity, or leisure. The backbone consists also of those companies whose workers income is directly related to their productivity and directly related to their employer's ability to mass produce innovative and important products. The backbone consists only of those companies that can give their workers benefits such as health care and pensions while the employer still makes a profit. Those companies that create wealth are the backbone of American industry not those that destroy wealth.
-
Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC
November 10, 2008
Emanuel Urges Aid for Auto Industry | www.nytimes.com
Short term planning, or no planning at all, got the American owned and operated OEM Automotive industry into the predicament it is in today. Not only are the current managers of these companies not 'car-guys' they are also not manufacturing engineering or quality management 'guys.' You cannot decide to change over a vehicle line, and then change it again during the changeover, without risking total failure of both the car and its maker Designs need to be finalized, technologies need to be chosen, and supply contracts need to be put in final form years before 'new' cars can hit the road. The GM, Chrysler, and Ford managers have been playing politics for so long that they can no longer build cars without political content that may be impossible using technologies that are unproven and even untested. This is politically motivated BS of the type that drives the 'promise' to achieve lofty goals simply by spending huge amounts of public money with no real plan!
-
Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC
November 7, 2008
Automakers and Union Seek Help From Pelosi | www.nytimes.com
It is incredible that anyone would consider financing the further operations of the American OEM automotive industry without insisting first that its current management be replaced as a precondition. The enabling legislation creating the facility to lend taxpayer originated funds include the following regulations that the Department of Energy is to follow: "before it can lend money, the Energy Department must conclude that the borrower has assets that exceed its liabilities, and is likely to be able to repay the principal and interest."
-
Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC
November 6, 2008
Aboriginal chiefs pitch business deals to China | www.canada.com
The North American civil rights movement has assured native Americans of their property rights and their sovereignty over the natural resources on their lands. American environmentalism has at the same time made sure that every conceivable roadblock is put in place to prevent the development of those natural resources. Canadian native Americans have now decided to stop going hat in hand to Ottawa to beg for development and are asking Chinese investors to build roads and powerplants on their land and to be paid from the harvest of the wood on their lands and the metals and minerals to be found there. Native Americans have been bought off with casino licenses that get them roads only to the door of the casino. How long will it take them to emulate their Canadian relatives?
-
Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC
November 6, 2008
Cerberus chief: Country can't let automakers fail | www.forbes.com
It seems that because he is too big for his own failure not to be noticed on Wall Street and at his alma mater's plush New York City 'club" John Snow is blathering about how he sees a 'bailout' of his Chrysler deal as a mandatory step that the US Treasury must take. Of course, it was his own miscalculation that brought Chrysler to this point; the exhausted car company should have failed 10 years ago when it was eviscerated of ideas by the very arrogant Juergen Schremp then the CEO of Daimler. The last solely Chrysler designed cars to go into production without input from Daimler were the PT-Cruiser and the 300. They were also the most successful of Chrysler's offerings in the DaimlerChrysler period.
Leading institutions connect with members of the Energy & Industrials councils through GLG
Most Popular Energy & Industrials News
-
Chesapeake Energy bites the natural gas bullet
January 25, 2012
-
Flurry of newbuild drilling rig deliveries in 2012 may dampen rig rates
January 20, 2012
-
Talisman joins the ranks of cautious E&P companies
January 12, 2012
-
Early signs of caution begin to cloud frontier exploration and production
January 4, 2012
-
It's too early in the game to write off Shtokman
December 8, 2011
Gerson Lehrman Group, Inc. connects communities with knowledge through two distinct, yet complementary offerings: GLG Research and G+.