Autoblog Green has picked up a press release from Alcoa, which reveals that the aluminum giant has secured the wheel contract for the Chevy Volt project. And though we could justifiably complain that this is literally putting the wheels before the horse (we still have no official confirmation of the battery contract status) there’s even more to dislike about this move. Obviously the Volt has to justify its sky-high MSRP on its green credentials (given that GM’s green credentials are riding on this single program), but choosing Alcoa as a wheel supplier further degrades the program’s green cred. Alcoa was recently named number 15 on Political Economy Research Institute’s (PERI) Toxic 100 of 2008 for releasing 13.11 million pounds of toxic air this year. The firm has run afoul of the Environmental Protection Agency several times for violations of the Clean Air Act and creating at least one groundwater superfund site. But hey, Alcoa’s wheels are about 20 percent lighter and twice as strong as other cast aluminum wheels. So whatevs, right? Then again, we are talking about a firm that trumpets paint burning as an environmentally friendly move.
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What company in their right mind would want to be a supplier to GM? Aren’t most of GM’s suppliers nearly bankrupt? Isn’t GM a master at squeezing their suppliers to death?
To be fair, I don’t think anyone involved with metalwork (or energy, or chemicals) can really be green. It’s a dirty industry, and going green means cutting your throat in terms of margin, in an industry where margins are already razor thin and commodity prices are ready to kick you in the ass at a moment’s notice.
I don’t know if this is a fair critique of GM, or if they’d be able to find another wheelmaker much better. Perusing PERI’s list is more or less the same as reading a who’s-who of heavy industry. Other than Pfizer, there’s not much there that’s truly surprising.
Heck, GM is #18.
Thats all right, dont they use strip mining to harvest all the nickel used in the Prius Batteries. That is one of the most environmentally destructive processes around. Then they load the North American nickel on massive ships burning a barrel of diesel fuel every two feet bound for Japan where the batteries are built, then back to North America, again by ship where they are then shipped by truck across the country.
As long as the people buying them think they are saving the planet, all is well.
“… (we still have no official confirmation of the battery contract status)”
and let’s not forget the engine plant is on hold, too…..
Alcoa or a competitor will supply the aluminum for the wheels regardless who actually casts them. Unless you make them out of compressed unicorn poop, by fabrication time, the environmental damage is largely done, aluminum or steel wheels.
I wonder if Alcoa is pioneering process improvements like thixotropic casting to get the strength up and keep the weight down? That would help sell more aluminum.
Making aluminum from ore is a particularly ugly, energy intensive process (recycle your cans).
That Alcoa released a press release about the wheels makes me think it is selling them at a loss to get the high profile, “green” contract.
If GM can work out that kind of agreement with every supplier they might eventually be able to build the Volt.
Do we know who is going to be supplying the Lashing Whips yet?
chuckR,
They’re compressing unicorn poop now? If technology keeps moving forward at this blistering pace, GM may actually be profitable at some point! (I’m in my early 40’s, so it won’t happen in my lifetime but maybe someday!)
Tex
Smoke.
Mirrors.
Repeat.
porschespeed – the Volt may be smoke and mirrors, but high strength casting can save weight and increase efficiency. And wouldn’t it be nice if your GM alloys didn’t leak like the ones on my son’s Caddy? Not effryvun can afford ze Porsche wheels, ja?
That title is very punny!
But let’s be honest – no one’s going to care that the Volt’s wheels are made by Alcoa. The Prius’s battery production methods haven’t mattered one bit either. Hell, these cars could pollute like crazy if they wanted to. Only the mpg matters.
@Retarded sparks
The engines are already being produced in Asia and will soon be produced in Europe. The engine is the least of their concerns right now.
One of my friend’s Pontiacs has rims that say Alcoa on them already. They may already supply GM with a number of things, just nothing worth mentioning in a press release. Doesn’t Audi use Alcoa as a supplier as well?
psarhjinian :
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
To be fair, I don’t think anyone involved with metalwork (or energy, or chemicals) can really be green. It’s a dirty industry, and going green means cutting your throat in terms of margin, in an industry where margins are already razor thin and commodity prices are ready to kick you in the ass at a moment’s notice.
I hadn’t thought about it that way. It’s quite an energy intensive process to smelt aluminum ore (hence the high price of the recycled stuff). In fact, Iceland recently built a hydroelectric dam in the middle of nowhere on top of a bunch of rare moss, just to power an Alcoa smelting facility. Alcoa ships ore there, processes it, ships it back to Europe. That’s fairly un-green, to me.
carlisimo sort of beat me to this:
I didn’t think that how any of these green cars got built that made a difference to anybody.
It was that they were being built and we’re available for you to purchase for whichever reason best suited your desire for them. Be it fuel savings, environmental reasons, or you just needed to show how good of a person you were…
Any world class manufacturer should have an advanced Supply Chain department that would have Sustainability agreements and stiff contract processes with their suppliers. This is to prevent things like pictures being taken at a supplier showing paint being dumped in the river with YOUR company’s shipping boxes showing proudly in the background.
That GM would use a supplier with continued environmental infractions is beyond me. There are only maybe 25+ suppliers in the world that could probably supply the Volt wheels – duh. This is a PR move for Alcoa achieved through select golf tourney’s and copius amounts of Christmas cheese to the higher-ups at GM. I would love to see the Bid selection process on this one.
It is hardly fair to pick on Alcoa.
Most OEMs can claim be easy on the environment only as much as much of the dirty work as been pushed out the supply chain.
Looking at the life cycle cost of a car the aluminum wheels could very well payback their energy premium over steel in saved fuel.
In motor-freight you see aluminum wheels for many weight sensitive applications like tankers and refrigerated trailers.
“The Toxic 100 index identifies the top U.S. air polluters among the world’s largest corporations.” Note the letters “U.S.” Maybe GM should source those wheels from some Chinese aluminum outfit, i’m sure their much more environmentally responsible than Alcoa…
“The Toxic 100 index identifies the top U.S. air polluters among the world’s largest corporations.” Note the letters “U.S.” Maybe GM should source those wheels from some Chinese aluminum outfit, i’m sure they are much more environmentally responsible than Alcoa…
15 commenters, 3 lying FUDders about the Prius battery. And yet some people think that there’s no need to combat the misinformation out there.
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/prius-diary-part-ii-the-long-wait/?apage=5
Hi #66 and others that commented along those lines.
The Prius does not have a dirty manufacturing process. A London Tabloid published an article to that effect, posting pictures of a Nickel mine in Canada, prior to mandatory polution controls that have since kicked in decades ago. A tiny fraction of the nickel from that mine goes into the Prius batteries. The tabloid has retracted the aritcle.
This plays on the ignorance of many people to what Nickel is actually used for before it was used in batteries. You see, that mine is 100 years old, and the Prius is only 10 years old. Nickel is used mostly in Stainless Steel, and super alloys used in aircraft engnes. Most kitchens in the US have about the same amount of Nickel in them as a Prius battery. If your convinced that the Prius has a dirty manufacturing process – you might also have to believe that so does your flatware, sinks, garbage disposal, and dish washer, and that buisness flight cross country, besides that shiny grill on the front of the Hummer next to you in traffic.
porschespeed – the Volt may be smoke and mirrors, but high strength casting can save weight and increase efficiency. And wouldn’t it be nice if your GM alloys didn’t leak like the ones on my son’s Caddy? Not effryvun can afford ze Porsche wheels, ja?
ChuckR,
Don’t get me wrong, salvation, or at least the future, is in maximizing the details – 20% here, 10% there. It really does add up. I have no issue with Alcoa making the wheels. The issue I have is there will never be a Volt to put them on.
My meta-point was (ok, obtuse) that this is all window dressing. Barring a huge, and I mean huge, change to the status quo, there will be no GM in 6 months. It may exist in a BK scenario, or as American Leyland, but there will not be a Volt.
There will also be no Camaro.
There may be something that happens WAY TF out of left-field that funds GM to the point where the Volt hits the road. But, I don’t know a soul who sees that money coming.
Anything GM is doing in the way of R&D right now, is merely there to provide the illusion that they will be there developing new cars in 6 months. The balance sheet indicates otherwise.
I run OZ veels on ze Pooch, FWIW. The turbo-twist hollow-spokes are priced just stoopid for what they are.
Then again, we are talking about a firm that trumpets paint burning as an environmentally friendly move.
You make it sound as though the waste is being burned in open pits, polluting the air with dark black smoke. I have no doubt that this paint waste is being disposed of with the “best available technology”.
Nothing that humans do is without some environmental impact. The trick is to choose a disposal method with the least impact. As the linked article says, the alternative to burning the waste is burying it in a landfill. Since automotive paint waste can include toxics like cadmium and lead, landfilling may not be the best alternative. Controlled combustion with appropriate exhaust technologies may have less environmental impact than landfill. Also, since the paint waste can have some BTU value, heat energy can be recovered for other uses.
While the article said that the paint “chips” are non-hazardous, it should be noted that is a term based on what the law says is “hazardous”, just like CFR 49 says that a 55 gallon barrel with less than 1″ of liquid is considered “empty”. While the paint waste involved in the article may be legally non-hazardous, it can still contain some hazardous materials so it needs to be disposed of appropriately.
Ironically, I actually have some professional experience at disposing paint waste, having managed all waste streams for a DuPont automotive paint lab. DuPont, btw, is #1 on PERI’s list of environmental bad guys, but then as psarhjinian pointed out, it’s basically a list of leading industrial companies. If you’re in manufacturing and you aren’t on the list, you’re probably not in such great shape. It would be interesting to see where Apple and other companies who offshore much of their production would be ranked if their outsourced-to-China operations were included. State controlled economies do not have a sterling environmental track record (see Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege: Murray Feshbach, Alfred Friendly, Lester Brown).
It’s not clear from the article just what they are talking about since it mentions “paint chips” but also describes the waste as being overspray. Assembly plant paint shops produce two kinds of paint waste, as far as I know. The walls of the paint shop are sprayed with a strippable coating that is replaced when the overspray builds up. Also, there is a circulating water system below the floor grates that collects overspray. Clay and other materials are added to the water to give the paint something to bind to. After separating the water, which can be reused, the resulting sludge has to be disposed of. Paint booth sludge has a high water content and all that clay etc, so it has a relatively low BTU value. Most of that ends up being burned at cement kilns, which operate at high enough temperatures that they can burn low BTU materials and destroy them to 5 or 6 nines (99.9999% destroyed). My guess is the article is talking about the strippable coatings for the paint shop walls, which has a higher BTU content than the sludge.
Landfilling or deepwater injection should be a last resort.
Most kitchens in the US have about the same amount of Nickel in them as a Prius battery. If your convinced that the Prius has a dirty manufacturing process – you might also have to believe that so does your flatware, sinks, garbage disposal, and dish washer, and that buisness flight cross country, besides that shiny grill on the front of the Hummer next to you in traffic.
A sophisticated form of the tu quoque argument. The fact remains that mining is not environmentally benign, and yes, I recognize that the appliances in my kitchen come with an environmental cost. Oh, and that Hummer gril? It’s most likely chrome (which has its own environmental issues) plated plastic, not stainless steel.
I at least recognize that the titanium, aluminum, rubber and polymers used to make my bicycle has some environmental impact. It would be nice if Prius drivers and environmentalists would acknowledge and not minimize the environmental impact of their own lifestyles.
My bike is morally superior to your Prius. That’s not really how I feel, but I think it’s an appropriate response.
If you’re in manufacturing and you aren’t on the list, you’re probably not in such great shape.
Chrysler is not on the list, you might be right.
Alcoa runs a few man made lakes here in NC. During a drought a few years ago, they refused to slow down the hydroelectricity production on High Rock Lake and the lake almost completely dried up, killing much of the wildlife that relies on the lake.
This is only one example of Alcoa’s environmental record.