GLG News by Scrap Metal Experts

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

The Ownership Of North America's Rare Earth Resources Is Consolidated, But There Is Still No New Production In Sight.

April 20, 2009

Analysis of:Molycorp Minerals, LLC Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire Controlling Interest in Great Western Minerals Group | uk.sys-con.com

What possible advantage can there be for MolyCorp, which was privatized in 2008 by a group of venture funds, one specializing in mining, and underwritten by Goldman Sachs, in acquiring the publicly traded Great Western Minerals Group (http://www.gwmg.ca)? It may be that GWMG's business model and operations  contains something that completes MolyCorp's business model for its Mountain Pass, California, rare earth mine, so that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Attention Hummer And Tesla Converters: There Isn't Enough Lithium Produced For Both You And The Rest Of Us

April 20, 2009

Analysis of:Hybrid Hummer Promises 100 Miles per Gallon | blog.wired.com

The celebration of the creation of sophomoric toys for elites with public money ignores the fact that the supply and demand of lithium is a zero sum game. When the demand for high end toys for people with unlimited discretionary spending ability is high the demand for practical devices for the person of average means will go unfilled. Each 53 kWh battery for a Hummer, for example, will, if a lithium-ion type, use 53 kg, or 116 lb of lithium; it will cost as much as $53,000 at retail just for this battery!

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

What If The Hybrid, Plug-in Hybrid, And Pure EV (Battery Only) Markets Are Only SegmentsThat Become Saturated Before Economies of Scale Are Achieved?

April 13, 2009

Analysis of:No easy road for U.S. auto industry | www.latimes.com

It's been a common practice for carmakers to first introduce a new vehicle "type" in limited production as a marketing test. There have been, for example, the Corvette, the Thunderbird, the Aquacar, the Edsel, the Pinto, The Chevrolet Vega, The Cadillac Cimmeron, the American Motors Alliance, the Chrysler K-car, the Chrysler Minivan, the SUV, The GM EV1, the Toyota Prius, and so on. Few of the very, very,  expensive marketing gambles for OEM auto makers have ever paid off, or even repaid their tooling costs, viz the second edition of the Thunderbird by Ford  This explains why auto makers are reluctant to try out totally new car types or radical "under the hood changes" the benefits of which need to be explained to non technical customers. The reluctance of any major car maker to put a pure EV or a lithium battery using vehicle on any kind into even limited production is an old story not a new one.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Exxon Says That in 2050 Hydrocarbon Fuels Will Still Account For 80% Of The World's Energy Supplies-The Same As In 2009

April 8, 2009

Analysis of:Oil Giants Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead | www.nytimes.com

The energy calculus that drives the creation of alternate sources of electricity is very simple: The world runs on the fuel that delivers the lowest cost per watt.   The key problem today with the electrification of cars, by which I mean the change of power trains for private passenger carrying vehicles from hydrocarbon burning internal combustion engines, ICEs, to electric drive trains powered by batteries, is the initial cost of batteries that can replace the performance of ICEs. Lithium-ion batteries, though today they must be hand made and selected, can be used to manufacture high performance private cars with decent ranges, but the battery for the Tesla, which it is claimed will allow an electric vehicle, EV, to go up to 150 mph and have a range of 300 miles, costs nearly $40,000.00, and the Tesla equipped with this battery will cost around 125,000 at retail. No one today knows how to make EVs with a range of 300 miles  and a top speed over 45 competitively with ICEs. 

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

The Use Of Lithium-ion Batteries For Large Scale Applications Is Impractical Except When Price Is No Object

April 6, 2009

Analysis of:Lithium-ion Batteries: 9 Years of Price Stagnation | seekingalpha.com

After nine years of research and billions of dollars of testing ideas it is obvious that there is no technology or manufacturing process extant or on the horizon that can bring to the market a practical, economically competitive, lithium-ion battery that can be used in a power train for an electrified private passenger carrying motor vehicle. Why does the research continue?

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Diasappointed Expectations: The American Market and the Electric Car

April 5, 2009

Analysis of:We Drive Nissan's Electric Car, and It's Sweet | blog.wired.com

By world standards, Americans live, on average, geographically far apart and expect to cover long distances in a hurry. No other country in history has had its personal travel ethic organized in this way. On top of this unique approach to spreading out and moving fast America has been the victim of a voracious OEM automotive industry that ran to extinction the logical build up of mass transportation among its cities other than in a narrow corridor on the east coast within which the elites of finance and government lived without any interest in the effect of the absence of mass transportation in "flyover" country. To this day these same elites ignore the effect of legislating cost onto personal transportation for the ordinary person just so the elites can feel good about "being green" as well as being ,economically, just plain stupid. The idea of the electrification of the motor car is actually too late and too narrow to do much good for the majority of Americans.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Can We Afford To Bet Our American Economy On The Supposition That Freeman Dyson Is Wrong?

April 1, 2009

Analysis of:The Civil Heretic | www.nytimes.com

Albert Einstein's work was considered heretical, because it was interpreted by those who thought him wrong as a repudiation of Newton who as everyone knew was right. Those who challenged Einstein were for the most part not only very eminent but who also had an understanding of the issues being raised by Einstein. There were very few people qualified to challenge Einstein, but the average person, no matter how intelligent, was not among them. Einstein's detractors and his supporters were both among the cream of the human race in intelligence. What they had in common was their belief that only empirical evidence could resolve the issue, as it ultimately did  when an critical experiment was designed that could be carried out practically. That is not at all how to describe the cult like followers of the religion of global warming, and it is a very good reason to withhold judgement on global warming until all of the facts are in.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

Will Artisanal Producers of Cars, Such as Tesla, Make Safe Ones? Probably Not.

March 29, 2009

Analysis of:Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don’t Work? | www.nytimes.com

The rush to "save energy" and lower emissions of carbon dioxide has resulted in a rush to market of cheap, poorly made, short lived so-called "compact" fluorescent bulbs. Even with "only" 40 to 50 components it has been impossible to make these bulbs reliable enough and cheap enough, so that the cost of using them and the emissions from making them over and over again as replacements ultimatly for themselves are actually higher than they would have been had consumers simply continued using incandescent lamps. How many components and systems are there in a motor car not eben counting the power train? Aren't the chnaces of component failure unacceptably high unless you have either 100% testing or a long established statistical quality analysis of failure modes? 

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

The Lower Price Hybrid Fighter Soon To Be Offerred By Toyota. Has Toyota Discovered Rare Metal Auditing And Conservation?

March 27, 2009

Analysis of:Toyota's low-cost hybrid to be based on Yaris | www.autobloggreen.com

It is certain that the prices of the critical technology metals, which are  required for the manufacturing of the nickel metal hydride batteries for Toyota's current Hybrid Synergy Drive, will be going up by 2011 as demand for them is predicted to exceed supply sometime in or soon after 2011. Toyota can perhaps reduce its cost of these metals by using less in smaller batteries, but with increasing prices that may not work. Perhaps Toyota is going to use its own version of what I am going to now name "Rare Metals Auditing and Conservation" or RAMAC, which in a way will allow a company to lease its own metals from itself. This can stabilize a supply while allowing it to increase whenever possible.

Jack LiftonCo-founder and DirectorTechnology Metals Research, LLC

An Extremely Well Reasoned Discussion Of Why No Further Public Funds Should Be Used To Research Lithium-Ion Batteries For The Sole Use of Propelling Electrified Private Passenger Carrying Motor Vehicles

March 25, 2009

Analysis of:Why Long Range EVs Can Never Be Cost Effective | www.altenergystocks.com

I urge you to read the article upon which this review and analysis is based, and when you are done doing that I urge you to read the associated article by the same author, John Petersen, entitled "Li-ion Battery Manufacturers: The Bleeding Edge of Energy Storage Technology." There is a hot link to this second article in the first paragraph in the commentary section below. After reading both articles please tell me why there is any argument supporting the use of tax dollars to develop lithium-ion batteries, or engineering methods to mass produce them, if the sole purpose of that development is to power electrified vehicles such as plug-in hybrids or battery only propelled motor cars for private passenger carrying use?

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