Homo Sapiens

Gao Changfeng, Dabiao, and the others were in a heated discussion. Apparently, they found Qingye Automobile’s design proposal utterly bizarre, a seemingly profligate waste of money.

However, they didn’t know that the cost of this system was actually well within a controllable range.

The costs for the power control system, a miniature generator, and the electric motor were comparable to those of a conventional hybrid vehicle.

But lead-acid batteries were extremely cheap. Even with the addition of a sulfur dioxide purifier, the cost was far lower than that of lithium-ion or ternary composite batteries.

The miniature gas turbine, waste gas and heat recovery system, and soundproofing layer weren’t particularly expensive either.

This was mainly due to low-cost components produced through biosynthesis technology. The combined cost of the miniature gas turbine, the waste gas and heat recovery system, and the soundproofing layer was only about 60% to 70% of a comparable gasoline or diesel engine.

The miniature gas turbine had a thermal efficiency of 50%. The waste gas and heat recovery system could reclaim 38% of the energy, which was equivalent to adding another 9.5% on top of the 50% thermal efficiency, bringing the total to 59.5%.

And don’t forget, this waste gas and heat recovery could be continuously cycled. With each subsequent cycle, the amount of energy recovered would be 9.5% of the amount recovered in the previous cycle, and so on.

But this enhancement would continue to stack.

A thermal efficiency of 59.5% was simply terrifying.

Private car owners might not care too much about engine thermal efficiency.

But for a transportation company, a 59.5% thermal efficiency was an improvement of 14.5 to 19.5 percentage points over the 40% to 45% thermal efficiency of the diesel engines currently used in transport vehicles.

With the same amount of fuel, a diesel truck could travel 40 to 45 kilometers, while the gas turbine hybrid could travel 59.5 kilometers.

If scaled up to transport routes of several hundred or several thousand kilometers, the difference would become even more pronounced.

And since the equipment costs weren’t significantly higher than those for diesel vehicles, Qingye Group naturally wouldn’t continue using diesel and gasoline engines. Unless specifically required, all vehicles would be replaced with gas turbine hybrids.

For a company, something like cost could have a massive impact, even with an increase or decrease of just one percent.

Let alone an improvement this dramatic.

While the company was still nimble enough to pivot, it was best to switch completely to gas turbine hybrids. Combined with the Homo Sapiens Company’s ability to produce its own methane, they could save petroleum for their strategic reserve. This was the optimal choice.

Gao Changfeng and the others didn’t know that the Homo Sapiens Company had already achieved low-cost, mass production of its precision components.

That’s why they thought the car factory’s designers were out of their minds.

After a short while, the bus arrived at the food street in the commercial district.

The moment they stepped off the bus, a myriad of aromas washed over them.

This food street was, in fact, the employee cafeteria for all of Airplane Town. To meet the daily needs of more than sixty thousand people, there were quite a few restaurants.

Though they were all subsidiaries of the Qingye Catering Company, these restaurants were direct competitors. And with a consulting firm always watching, its authority hanging over them, the service, sanitation, and cuisine were all kept in top shape.

According to headquarters regulations, the ratio was one restaurant and two snack shops per thousand people.

Airplane Town had a total of 63 restaurants and 126 snack shops, employing over 2,400 staff members.

At first, Gao Changfeng found it very strange, but after living here for over half a year, he had gradually gotten used to it. He wasn’t even surprised by it anymore.

There were no private businesses in all of Airplane Town that weren’t part of the Qingye Group.

Forget snack shops; the Qingye Group even ran housekeeping services, gyms, tattoo parlors, beauty salons, photo studios, laundromats, flower shops, and funeral homes.

As a Qingye Group employee in a company town like Airplane Town, basically everyone you met, wherever you went, was a colleague.

After a few minutes’ walk, Dabiao led the group to a restaurant called ”Happy Mushroom.”

”Let’s order!”

The five of them didn’t ask for anyone else’s opinion and simply ordered for themselves.

This was to avoid any suspicion of bribing colleagues or superiors. While you could write a report to explain the situation, it was a huge hassle, and the person being treated probably wouldn’t want to write an explanatory report just for a single meal.

Therefore, when employees ate together, they usually split the bill. Since the entire town was made up of company employees, this practice of going Dutch had become the norm over time.

Happy Mushroom specialized in mushroom dishes. By now, things like termite mushrooms, morels, Russula, button mushrooms, king oyster mushrooms, shiitake, and enoki mushrooms were all being artificially cultivated on a large scale.

Seeing morels and termite mushrooms on the menu, Gao Changfeng couldn’t help but smile wryly to himself.

Currently, the mass-production technology for artificially cultivating these two edible fungi only existed in Luzon and Hongsawaddy. And the mushroom cultivation base in Hongsawaddy had been built by the Homo Sapiens Company from Luzon.

Meanwhile, some companies back in Huaguo were using the news about the mass production of termite mushrooms and morels in Luzon and Hongsawaddy to unscrupulously hype up their own cultivation technologies all over the country.

He’d heard that several thousand farmers had been scammed by these companies into investing in so-called ”morel and termite mushroom greenhouses.”

These past few days, he had been using channels like his hometown association to send back information about this. Saving even one farmer from being scammed was a good deed.

In fact, many of the ethnic Chinese working in Hongsawaddy were sending similar messages back to their hometowns, so Gao Changfeng didn’t need to be overly cautious about arousing suspicion.

Those companies hyping up their technology were utterly ruthless.

After all, both termite mushrooms and morels were special types of edible fungi. Cultivating them required specialized high-yield strains, dedicated facilities, and unique techniques.

These techniques and requirements were clearly not something that could be easily replicated in a normal greenhouse. The average farmer simply didn’t have the resources to meet the cultivation conditions.

Previously, during a vacation, Gao Changfeng had taken a special trip to visit a mushroom farm near Mandalay.

Cultivating termite mushrooms and morels had to be done inside specific factory buildings. A single complete set of equipment required an investment of several million jin yuan, not to mention the various special culture media.

He had also heard that the core raw materials for the culture media were highly classified by the Homo Sapiens Company. They could only be airlifted from Luzon each month, and no production workshop had been set up in Hongsawaddy.

It wasn’t that no Huaguo companies had gone to Luzon seeking to cooperate.

It was just that the Homo Sapiens Company insisted on technological secrecy and refused to transfer the technology. Even for cooperation on non-core technologies, the terms were so strict that no company had yet succeeded in obtaining a license.

Ostensibly, the reason the Homo Sapiens Company had agreed to build a factory in Hongsawaddy was to secure a stable supply chain for new types of antibiotics.

In a moment, Dabiao and the others finished ordering. Gao Changfeng also quickly picked a few of his favorite dishes.

Just then, a few employees at the next table started quietly discussing the recent online rumors about a mysterious aircraft while they ate.

’Perfect,’ Gao Changfeng thought, inwardly delighted. ’Finally, a chance to steer the conversation this way.’

He said nonchalantly, ”That plane they’re talking about online... it’s probably the MiG-25s imported from Lucia, right?”

”Obviously,” Dabiao said with a skeptical look. ”But is an old antique like that really worth fielding?”

But Mao Youmu, having a bit of local bias, pointed out a few of the MiG-25’s strengths. ”The MiG-25’s speed is still pretty good. The short range doesn’t matter; it’s perfect for border defense. The key is that it’s cheap to build.”

Dabiao gave a dry chuckle, clearly unconvinced.

Perhaps before the 1980s, the MiG-25 was indeed a good plane.

But now, with all sorts of fourth-generation fighters ruling the skies and fifth-generation ones on the verge of release, the MiG-25’s performance had no advantages whatsoever in Dabiao’s opinion.

Even Gao Changfeng thought the same.

After all, Hongsawaddy’s aviation industry had such a poor foundation. From an outsider’s perspective, being able to successfully produce the MiG-25 was already the limit of Hongsawaddy’s capabilities.