K. Smith wrote:

snip

Mercury are so scared of DFI they're spending huge amounts on belatedly
changing over to 4 strokes & again ALL boating consumers will pay in the
end. NB Merc have now claimed dumping protection against Yamaha, which
means this season the price of OBs will go up yet again.


snip

Mercury has a line of optimax motors going to 250 HP, yet spends a great
deal of money, more than 100 million usd I think I have seen reported,
developing a line of 4 strokes, with the first models being 275 and 250
hp. It is indeed interesting to speculate why they would do such a
thing, and until Karen's post I really hadn't considered it.

Some possible reasons.... deciding validity is up to the individual. It
is possible that.....

1. Optimax is not competitive with 4 strokes due to poor reliability or
performance.

2. Optimax is more expensive to manufacture in the long run

3. Customers will migrate to 4 strokes and no longer buy two strokes for
whatever reason.

4. Optimax will be unable to meet emission requirements at some time in
the future.

5. Optimax is not suitable for motors above 250 hp, at least in some
applications.

6. Nothing wrong with Optimax but some folks want 4 strokes and Merc
needs to have them. Since they are suing Yamaha, they can't get them
there.

These are my quickly thought up hypothetical reasons. Some might even
be true

del cecchi