To: Maverick who wrote (3682 ) 12/30/1998 2:27:00 PM From: PIERRE HANDL Respond to
Good article. To your no surprise, I am up beat both on China and Orbital. Sure China has human rights issues, but that too I believe will improve. It has to if China is to reach its full potential. What encouraged me in the article was the admission on the part of the Chinese official that some of the data may have been faked. Looking back to the cold war period, such an admission was unthinkable. In one of the many news articles I've read about contemporary China, they are in the process to replicate the US interstate highway system in China. Plans have been implemented to build a 23,000 mile highway system. China has a huge store house of US currency to help pay for the public works construction. Such an undertaking will increase the demand for vehicles, cars, trucks, and motorcycles. Currently China manufactures I believe over 1 million cars a year. I would bet a large percentage are those mini cars/cabs they are reported to be eliminating. The mini car concept may not be a hot number here in the US, considering the monster vehicles GM, Ford, and Chrysler are producing, but it is in Japan and Europe. With Orbital and Texmaco in a deal to produce mini 2S car engines, we should experience the beginning of a world wide explosion of highly efficient, clean and cost effective vehicles outside the North American continent. The auto industry may try to sell us fuel cell and hybrid electric equipped cars, but the old fashion, however improved internal combustion engine will still be the most effective technology on a total cost, benefit, and environmental consideration to produce portable mechanical power for cars, motorcycles, and trucks in the next millennium. A 10% to 15% mileage improvement OCP offers may not sound like much, but when equating this to the amount of tons of pollutants that will be removed from the world tail pipes over the period of time before the esoteric technologies become widely accepted, is very significant.
