Looks like I picked a good time not to want an new car.
Essentially, you can’t make cars without aluminum. You can’t work with aluminum without using magnesium. And as of December, you may not be able to work with magnesium much — if at all. Amos Fletcher, analyst for Barclays, put it succinctly: “If magnesium supply stops, the entire auto industry will potentially be forced to stop.”
China has been in the midst of an energy crisis recently, with factories shutting down to conserve power. Unfortunately for the car industry, China is also the world’s primary supplier of magnesium — 85% of the world’s supply comes from the country.
The most prevalent magnesium-producing town in China, Yulin, just ordered 35 of its 50 production facilities to shut down. The remaining 15 have been told to scale back operations by half, leaving production drastically reduced.
This slowdown in magnesium wouldn’t be such an issue if the metal could be easily stored, but it’s got an incredibly short life span on its own. Magnesium oxidizes relatively quickly, and European reserves are expected to run dry by the end of November.
Hey, speaking of China’s grip on our gonads… how are we faring on the pharmaceutical front?
China is fighting economic WW3 while here in north America we are fighting gender bathroom and climate and bike lane issues.
Please….. convince me china (lower case c for disrespect noted) is NOT playing at war with us. The supply chain issues are not so much Covid as them saying slow down per article. Well there’s Covid to begin with…a google search says china has about 4000 deaths. (if anyone you know says something is true they found on the internet.. send them to that. Really? They built a hospital in 10 days in Jan 2020 and 18 months later 4000 deaths in 1.3 billion? Thats less than a rounding error)
Don’t get me started on the computer chip fiasco. china has us by the balls and no one is is calling them out. Here in Sask its all vaccine and unvax and passports and ICU beds……..oooo kids can spread covid…… deadly Delta variant…. wait till we get even deadlier Echo variant… Wake up. Look up river where this is all coming from. Like seriously. china fixed the covid? 4000 deaths? Hey Moe Trudope and Ford and Kenny……..Fix covid like china did!
Hopefully Kate’s asteroid hits before the Zeta variant arrives, as we’ll be out of Greek letters to name them after that.
mhb23re
No surprise there…Anyone take a good look at new Car lots the past 6-12 months..?? I’ve got friends that are mechanics at a Large Chev/Olds Calgary Dealership…lot is half empty. New Trucks are sold 6-8 Weeks prior to Delivery. AT LIST.. No deals.
Wanna see what the used market is like..?? Try finding a used GM/Chev Duramax Diesel from 2000-2012…..NOTHING on Kijiji, only one I know of (private deal), a stock 2005 4 dr CCSB with 235k… going for $38,500…!! I’m betting he’ll get more than asking price. Even the dealers cannot find good used product North America wide.
Parts are now definitely going to be an issue…… as is EVERYTHING ELSE.
I’ve been stocking up certain goods…From Dura Cell batts, Filters for my Truck to Canned food…etc.
There’s a shit ton more to Covid than just a Virus and its cousin, the Bio Weapon.
Add 50 yrs of Leftist IDIOCY – Public Service Unionism – Parliamentary Democratic Socialism and here we are , Well and Truly FKD.
I’m getting more and more convinced that the “preppers” are starting to be prescient … my new walk-in pantry is just about finished …
Try refining Aluminium without ELECTRICITY..
Before the development of the high-current electrical smelter a little oven a century ago, Aluminium had a similar value to Platinum.
There was apparently a European Monarch who liked the idea of a lightweight, “rare” metals, so he ordered a ceremonial helmet made of the stuff.
Now, people use it for food wrapper and chuck it in the bin.
BRUCE….BANG on.
95% of the cost of refining bauxite into Aluminum…is ELECTRICITY.
Hang on to your aluminum pots folks…theres gonna be a huge upswing in the Value of those…LOL. Scenes from WWII come to mind. Now I’m not too sure of the Metallurgy of said pots…may not be the right composition of Al w/ minor alloying amounts of Mg Si Cu Zn …..?
Nah – more like 25%, when energy was rationally priced, and maybe 40% now – depending on where you buy your electricity.
RTA says they need 12-13MWh per Tonne. Call it 13MWh – that’s about $650 CAD, out of a Tonne of Al that goes for about $3,000 (ish) USD – say $4K CAD.
Aluminum shows some real swings in price – but an eyeball average is maybe $1,700 – $1,800 USD over the past ten years, and it rarely drops below $1,500; that suggests that $1,500 is pretty close to the cash cost of production – when prices go get lower people start cutting output. That would put energy costs at $650 CAD out of cash costs of maybe $2,000.
Fascism with Chinese characteristics is only profitable if the dragon is allowed to stuff himself with all the coal he wants at a fraction of its fair value.
Chairman Xi and his western collaborators are finding out what happens when you run out of cheap energy.
“There was apparently a European Monarch who liked the idea of a lightweight, “rare” metals, so he ordered a ceremonial helmet made of the stuff.”
Napoleon III had a set of cutlery made of it. Looked a bit silly 10 years later when the refining process was worked out but still….
We used to make cars without computers or aluminum. I bet we could still do that.
VOWG
HSLA Steel is the way to go….repairable – weldable – strong.
Cannot say that of any newer F150 and possibly other “aluminum” makes.
None of the above applies.
Or better yet we could make computers and aluminum. Canada is actually one of the biggest aluminum producers in the world. We don’t mine it, but we used to have cheap plentiful electricity for the refining.
Rusty, that would require thought and investment and training. This is Canada.
Meanwhile the Washington Examiner reports that Dementia Joe is joining Blackie in banning new mines.
Time to quit communist China.
Farming out our manufacturing to the world’s most repressive and evil regime maybe wasn’t such a good idea.
We’re running short of all that’ Abundant Cheap Stuff®
mhb23re
The supply chains are very intertwined. You may only need a few components out of a 100 from the Chicoms but it still makes your product incomplete.
Then there are things like plastics.
The Chicoms are kind of like a virus. They don’t want to kill the host, but making it very sick allows them to thrive.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I wonder if much of this is deliberate. China did stop ordering coal to teach the Australians a (much needed) lesson. Now it seems like everything that is strategic is suddenly unavailable AND it comes from China.
Would China hurt its economy to teach the world a lesson? yes
Why would China intentionally hurt its economy? Because it would hurt other countries more AND it provides a convenient distraction from the fact that the real estate market in China is collapsing.
The main miners of magnesium are:
1. China : 18 Mt (66% of world supply)
2. Turkey : 2.7 Mt
3. Russia : 1.3 Mt
4. Brazil : 1.2 Mt
https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/magnesium-investing/top-magnesite-producing-countries/
Over the years auto makers have substituted out steel for aluminum to save weight, primarily to meet efficiency standards. This is a one-time thing.
More recently governments have substituted out coal for natural gas to reduce CO2 emissions (an immediate 50% savings without loss of energy). This is a one time thing.
We have some interesting decisions to make.
This is interesting.
Remember during the short reign of Joe who? He built a magnesium producing plant in High River.
For all practical purposes, it never produced hardly anything and shut down in a year or two. Been shut down since.
There is a plant between Exshaw and Canmore the puts out tones of magnesium every day, must be a secret.
There could be 2 of them, they are mostly hidden from clear view.
You don’t mean the actual plant in Exshaw right.??
That mines predominately Limestone.? Hmm wonder if one of their off products is magnesium….apparently it may be CaMg..??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolomite_(rock)
However Herr Obergruppen Furher aka the pedophilic surfing ASShole hiding in a cottage in the Eastern Townships will shut that shit down in a heartbeat.
Not the cement plant. As I mentioned, the two plants are quite hidden. When you take a hike to Grotto canyon, you walk right past them on your left. One is Baymag the other one, I think is Baymag ll, though I’m not exactly sure
nothing new, this happened back in 2008 too, but then settled back down….
https://www.cmegroup.com/education/articles-and-reports/magnesium-abundant-and-cheap-or-a-strategic-blindspot.html
it’s also a fairly small market compared to others thus china was able to dominate it by producing it cheaper than anyone else.
Curiosity bids me ask, but where does Baymag, Alberta, get it’s magnesium?
It seems as if we once produced but we no longer do? Tell me this isn’t another self inflicted wound!
https://www.hatch.com/About-Us/Publications/Technical-Papers/2011/10/Magnesium-Metal-Production-in-Canada
That’s funny…
Everybody should be happy that they’re not getting it from China. Be happy in your mud huts without cars! Boycott China, even if it means reducing yourselves to abject poverty!
Now you too can voice empty virtue signals, just like the anti oil sands or boycott Cuba crowd, because you’re oh so virtuous and moral!
As long as there’s enough to build the electric bus you’ll be forced to take to commute to work even if it loses its charge halfway down the route.
And its January and its -25.
lm torn. on the one hand, l wanna see this play out and see if my own personal ‘End Times’ suspicions/hunches/beliefs are correct, oooooon the other hand what if they ARE correct. ‘be careful whut ya wish for’.