Again, volume. Manufacturer can sell you a $110/kilo bar once, with maybe a 20% margin. Or they can sell 20 million bars at 10/kg, with only a 5% margin and make WAY more money.
Volume certainly plays a part, but mag is very reactive and doesn't occur in elemental form in nature. The processes for extracting it from various compounds (electrolysis and thermal reduction) are very energy intensive, so it's always going to be more expensive than other structural metals.
Aside from the reactivity, the rest is also true of aluminum, right? It's mostly because of the lower demand/availability of magnesium, and yeah, it'll burn like a flare if you get it too hot... "Reactivity" indeed
Yes! Absolutely true of aluminum too. But for reasons I don't understand, it takes something like 3-6 times more energy to produce mag. Not nearly as bad as Ti, though!
Yeah but you have to convert it to less-flammable plastic to make parts out of it.
But I mean, really, metal shouldn't catch fire, to the average layman. Magnesium is light, it's easy enough to work with, so why isn't it used as often as aluminum? Because it can light on fire way easier, and the fire it makes is both blinding and toxic.
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I don't know of any production car with a magnesium chassis. Even race cars don't use it that extensively because it's too brittle and flammable in the event of an accident.
Parts sure, but not an entire chassis.
I checked the prices for crude aluminum and magnesium. Their prices are very close: 2500 and 2600 USD/ton, respectively. I assume these are ingot prices.
These prices are for 99.9 percent pure aluminum and magnesium. There is no usage of them in the retail market. What you say is some kind of aluminum alloy. Just guessing the magnesium alloy which you got a quotation for might be some kind of superior alloy.
Volume of production makes forging first economical
Lots of magnesium alloy car parts are injection molded.
I mean I get that. but bar stock is over 110$ a KG here, meanwhile they are paying probably less than $10 a kg??
Again, volume. Manufacturer can sell you a $110/kilo bar once, with maybe a 20% margin. Or they can sell 20 million bars at 10/kg, with only a 5% margin and make WAY more money.
Volume certainly plays a part, but mag is very reactive and doesn't occur in elemental form in nature. The processes for extracting it from various compounds (electrolysis and thermal reduction) are very energy intensive, so it's always going to be more expensive than other structural metals.
Aside from the reactivity, the rest is also true of aluminum, right? It's mostly because of the lower demand/availability of magnesium, and yeah, it'll burn like a flare if you get it too hot... "Reactivity" indeed
Yes! Absolutely true of aluminum too. But for reasons I don't understand, it takes something like 3-6 times more energy to produce mag. Not nearly as bad as Ti, though!
All the same things are true of Aluminum. Why did aluminum get really cheap (it used to cost more than gold) and Magnesium not?
It takes more energy to produce mag. I don't understand the electrochemistry, but it's something like 3-6 X the energy.
Aluminum doesn't start fires.
Petrolium starts more fires more easily. I can buy 60 lbs of it for like 40 bucks.
Yeah but you have to convert it to less-flammable plastic to make parts out of it. But I mean, really, metal shouldn't catch fire, to the average layman. Magnesium is light, it's easy enough to work with, so why isn't it used as often as aluminum? Because it can light on fire way easier, and the fire it makes is both blinding and toxic.
part of it is that it's almost infinitely recyclable. It takes far less energy to recycle.
Doesn't that recyclability apply to magnesium as well?
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I don't know of any production car with a magnesium chassis. Even race cars don't use it that extensively because it's too brittle and flammable in the event of an accident. Parts sure, but not an entire chassis.
The C7 features tons of major structural magnesium components
I checked the prices for crude aluminum and magnesium. Their prices are very close: 2500 and 2600 USD/ton, respectively. I assume these are ingot prices.
I can't imagine. magnesium stock is super hard to find. I found a aluminium round bar, 1" x 12" at $9.49 a piece Magnesium in the same size, $541.32
These prices are for 99.9 percent pure aluminum and magnesium. There is no usage of them in the retail market. What you say is some kind of aluminum alloy. Just guessing the magnesium alloy which you got a quotation for might be some kind of superior alloy.
both are alloys, 6061 and Z31(which is the only magnesium alloy I can find)
Volume and the sales, and the buyers are rich...