Metals and Manufacturing – Page 15

Pollution studies cast doubt on China’s electric-car policies – by Charles Clover (Financial Times – May 20, 2018)

May 22, 2018

https://www.ft.com/

The environmental case for electric vehicles in China has been complicated by research that asserts the cars produce more pollution than those with internal combustion engines.

The issue is likely to raise questions about China’s push to become the world’s EV champion by 2025. The government has justified devoting massive resources to encouraging domestic EV production — including billions of dollars in subsidies and production quotas — based on the proposition they are greener than petrol-engine cars.

But the environmental benefits were unclear, experts said. While China has been on a green energy push for years, coal still accounts for an overwhelming proportion of electricity production, meaning that charging electric batteries also burns carbon — often at a higher per-kilometre rate than petrol engines.

Threat of Cobalt Supply Shock Is Top Risk for Electric Vehicles – by David Stringer and Martin Ritchie (Bloomberg News – May 21, 2018)

May 22, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

A burgeoning risk of a supply crunch in cobalt — a key battery metal that’s more than tripled in price in two years — poses one of the biggest threats to forecasts for rising electric vehicle adoption.

Major investment in mines is required to avoid price spikes that could see cost reductions for lithium-ion batteries stall, Bloomberg New Energy Finance analysts said Monday in a report.

Shortages of cobalt are likely earlier than previously forecast and the issue poses a potential challenge to EV sales over the coming five to seven years, according to the report.

Tesla delivers bad news for cobalt price, boost for rare earths – by Frik Els (Mining.com – May 3, 2018)

May 3, 2018

http://www.mining.com/

Wall Street is aghast at Elon Musk’s dismissive attitude toward analysts’ probing following a quarter of record (but less than expected) losses for Tesla, but the electric vehicle maker did provide some answers to questions that’s been vexing the mining industry.

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a provider of price information and research on battery supply chains, parsed the numbers after Tesla gave a rare indication of the relative proportions of raw materials used in its latest lithium-ion battery for its Model 3.

At first blush it’s not good news for miners of cobalt, a crucial ingredient in batteries used in electric vehicles and cellphones that’s been trading near decade highs above $90,000 a tonne.

Car owners had a sweet ride, but electric cars will end that – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – April 27, 2018)

April 30, 2018

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Imagine this line from an updated version of The Blues Brothers: “It’s 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full battery charge, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”

Doesn’t quite work, does it? “We got a full tank of gas” was Dan Aykroyd’s line as he and John Belushi fired up their Dodge Monaco in the first movie. Gasoline-powered cars are branded into North American culture, and the idea of an American battery-powered car culture seems absurd.

How did gasoline-fuelled cars become so popular? The United States has about 263 million registered passenger vehicles. The strength and flexibility of the internal combustion engine explains only part of the story.

Fuel cell frenzy as cars, plants deploy platinum to protect environment – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – April 26, 2018)

April 27, 2018

http://www.miningweekly.com/

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Hyundai has just launched its new Nexo fuel cell car in South Korea, pre-orders for which exceeded expectations, Honda last month launched the new 2018 Clarity fuel cell car, Doosan Fuel Cell America has cut the ribbon on three 460 kW fuel cells at the Waterbury Pollution Control Authority in Connecticut,

FuelCell Energy has announced an agreement to sell a 2.8 MW fuel cell power plant to the Tulare Waste Water Treatment Facility in California, Amazon has contracted with Plug Power to deploy fuel cell forklifts at its warehouses around the US, and the California Fuel Cell Partnership announced the opening of the state’s thirty-third hydrogen fuelling station.

These positive deployments of platinum-catalysed hydrogen fuel cells in the US follow strides taken in Japan, Germany and China to bring these fuel cells into service to protect the environment holistically, and they also precede a national fuel cell forum in Washington on June 12, ahead of a key US Department of Energy merit review.

Daimler joins China’s Responsible Cobalt Initiative – by Yilei Sun (Reuters U.S. – April 25, 2018)

April 25, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – German carmaker Daimler has joined the Responsible Cobalt Initiative, a program established under a Chinese industry body to tackle risks in the cobalt supply chain arising from artisanal mining.

Cobalt consumers are under pressure to ensure the material they use is not tainted by child labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the source of about 60 percent of the world’s cobalt.

Amnesty International says about a fifth of the country’s cobalt production is mined by hand by informal miners including children, often in dangerous conditions. Daimler, owner of the Mercedes Brand, joined the RCI at the start of April, RCI Chairman Sun Lihui told Reuters.

Platinum Mines in the World’s Top Producer Are Shrinking – by Felix Njini and Eddie Van Der Walt (Bloomberg News – March 26, 2018)

March 26, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

“Ramaphoria” boosted the rand and revived investor sentiment on South Africa. But deep underground in the country’s platinum mines, there’s very little cause for optimism.

Producers in South Africa, which accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s mined platinum, are closing shafts and cutting thousands of jobs as a stronger rand combines with stagnating prices for the metal in squeezing profit margins.

The future looks equally bleak, as reduced demand for diesel engines and the rise of electric cars threatens to erode the need for the metal used to cut pollution.

BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020 – by Edward Taylor (Reuters U.S. – March 22, 2018)

March 23, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – BMW (BMWG.DE) will not mass produce electric cars until 2020 because its current technology is not profitable enough to scale up for volume production, the chief executive said on Thursday.

Munich-based BMW unveiled its first battery electric car in 2013, and has been working on different generations of battery, software and electric motor technology since then.

The i8 Roadster model, due to hit showrooms in May, is equipped with what BMW calls its fourth-generation electric drive technology. Advances in battery raw materials and chemistry has increased its range by 40 percent over the previous version, BMW said.

VW Just Gave Tesla a $25 Billion Battery Shock – by Chris Reiter and Christoph Rauwald (Bloomberg News – March 13, 2018)

March 13, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Volkswagen AG secured 20 billion euros ($25 billion) in battery supplies to underpin an aggressive push into electric cars in the coming years, ramping up pressure on Tesla Inc. as it struggles with production issues for the mainstream Model 3.

The world’s largest carmaker will equip 16 factories to produce electric vehicles by the end of 2022, compared with three currently, Volkswagen said Tuesday in Berlin.

The German manufacturer’s plans to build as many as 3 million of the cars a year by 2025 is backstopped by deals with suppliers including Samsung SDI Co., LG Chem Ltd. and Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. for batteries in Europe and China.

How vanadium-coated smart glass saves energy – by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud (Mining.com – March 8, 2018)

March 9, 2018

http://www.mining.com/

Smart glass windows made with vanadium are capable of saving more energy by stopping thermal radiation from escaping and, thus, preventing heat loss during the winter, and by avoiding infrared radiation from the sun from entering the building during the summer.

This is according to a compilation of studies made public today by VanadiumCorp Resource (TSX-V:VRB). The Vancouver-based company owns 100% of the Lac Doré vanadium-titanium-iron mine located in the eastern Canadian province of Quebec.

Based on research advanced by the U.S. Department of Education and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, VanadiumCorp’s CEO, Adriaan Bakker, said that vanadium defies the Wiedemann-Franz Law, which states that good conductors of electricity are also good conductors of heat.

Deadly mineral that endangered town of Asbestos might save it (Bloomberg News/Montreal Gazette – March 7, 2018)

March 7, 2018

http://montrealgazette.com/

Residue from asbestos mine is rich in magnesium, which can be transformed into a light metal used in everything from medical implants to Tesla electric cars

There’s no running away from the past in Asbestos. The town’s most prominent landmark is a crater more than two kilometres wide — and deep enough to lodge the Eiffel Tower — a testament to the world’s once-bottomless appetite for the deadly mineral that sustained the local economy for decades and gave the town its name.

Quebec once produced half of the world’s asbestos and offered the highest-paying mining jobs in Canada before concern about cancer led to the fire-resistant fibre being banned in more than 50 countries, with the mine finally shutting down in 2012.

But now it turns out that the future of Asbestos may actually be in asbestos. Well, not in asbestos, per se, but in the millions of tons of discarded residue that piled up over more than a century of mining for it.

U.S. unveils steep tariffs, raising peril of trade war – by Steven Chase, Greg Keenan and Adrian Morrow (Globe and Mail – March 2, 2018)

March 2, 2018

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

U.S. President Donald Trump is firing the first shot in what could amount to a global trade war, announcing plans to slap hefty tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum as a means of protecting American jobs.

The Canadian government was quick to threaten retaliation against the United States if steel and aluminum from Canada are included in the administration’s trade action.

Mr. Trump said on Thursday he intends to levy 25-per-cent tariffs on steel imports and 10-per-cent on aluminum imports, sending U.S. stock markets tumbling over fears of global retaliation and higher inflation.

‘Trade wars are good, and easy to win’: Trump’s tariff threat sends shock waves around world – by Jonathan Stearns and Thomas Biesheuvel (Financial Post/Bloomberg – March 2, 2018)

March 2, 2018

http://business.financialpost.com/

Trump’s aggressive stance has stoked fears of trade retaliation and roiled global markets. Here are the developments so far

After President Donald Trump said the U.S. plans to impose 25 per cent tariffs on steel imports and 10 per cent on aluminum, the shock waves are being felt around the world. Asia’s up in arms, the European Union and Canada are pushing back, and there are plenty of forecasts that U.S. consumers are set to pay a whole bunch more for all sorts of purchases. Think beer cans to autos.

While the exact form of the curbs remains unclear — especially whether U.S. allies will win exemptions — the reaction on Friday from outside the world’s biggest economy has been largely negative. Beyond metals, the biggest risk is a tit-for-tat trade war, which draws in other products, possibly foods. We’re following developments here. The time-stamps are New York.

Donald Trump’s plan to curb U.S. imports of steel on national-security grounds threatens the foundations of the World Trade Organization, warned the European Steel Association.

Pandering to electric-vehicle owners contains blind spots – by Konrad Yakabuski (Globe and Mail – February 28, 2018)

February 28, 2018

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Electric-vehicle sales more than doubled in Ontario in 2017 as rebates worth up to $14,000 per car propelled the province past Quebec to become Canada’s EV leader. Many electric-car fans celebrated this as proof that Ontario’s latest incentives to encourage EV sales are working.

Working for them, maybe. But what about for taxpayers and the planet? We already know that government rebates on EV purchases are a horrendously expensive way to reduce carbon. Encouraging consumers to move to smaller gasoline-powered cars by increasing sales taxes on fossil fuels would do so much more to cut emissions.

What’s more, it is now becoming clear that mining the massive amounts of cobalt and lithium needed to manufacture the bigger batteries required to increase EV range and reliability risks creating a slew of unintended social, economic and environmental consequences.

Platinum price crashes through $1,000 after German diesel ban – by Frik Els (Mining.com – February 27, 2018)

February 28, 2018

http://www.mining.com/

Platinum group metals were the hardest hit on generally weak precious metals markets Tuesday after a German court ruled that cities in Europe’s largest economy and world’s fourth largest automaker have the right to ban diesel cars.

The price of platinum were back in triple digit territory on New York futures markets on Wednesday falling 2% to a low of $983 an ounce. Palladium was also weaker at $1,033 an ounce as it continues to retreat from record highs of $1,138 an ounce hit in January.

“We’re witnessing the creeping death of diesel,” Stefan Bratzel, director of the Center of Automotive Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany told Bloomberg News.