Critical Reasoning

At an enormous research cost, a leading chemical company has developed a manufacturing process for converting wood fibers into a plastic. According to the company, this new plastic can be used for, among other things, the hulls of small sailboats. But what does the company think sailboat hulls used to be made of? Surely the mania for high technology can scarcely go further than this.
18. The author’s opinion of the manufacturing process described in the passage is based primarily on the fact that
(A) plastic is unlikely to be durable enough for high-quality sailboat hulls
(B) the research costs of developing the process outweigh any savings possible from the use of the plastic
(C) a small sailboat is not normally regarded as a high-tech product
(D) hulls for small sailboats can be made from wood without converting it into plastic
(E) many other spheres of human activity are in far greater need of technological research