Low-Volume Hardware Costs
The cluster focuses on debates about why niche hardware products are expensive to produce despite simple designs, highlighting low-volume manufacturing challenges, tooling costs, R&D expenses, and lack of economies of scale.
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And your are implying that decreased cost and ease of manufacturing aren't viable reasons??
If it was so cheap to produce then why does it cost $10k?
This is an extremely expensive, low volume product. I would not be surprised if manufacturing uses the same process as prototyping.
No, it reflects the price of low volume manufacturing.
Cheap for developing, expensive for massive manufacturing. That's what developed world company doesn't want.
I'm a hardware engineer and grasp fully how simple this is. But cost to make in a garage != cost to make at scale. Bringing hardware to market is expensive. You are forgetting mold tooling costs, factory fees, prototype costs, profit, etc. The fixed NRE costs can go to zero at mass scale, but if they intend to only sell 1000 or so (probably a good estimate), they need to account for it somehow.
Since manufacturing two things is more expensive than manufacturing one thing?
Small company, low volume product, high production premiums. Not everyone can afford Amazon and Apple level volumes.
Sad reflection of the realities of manufacturing, I suspect. They won’t ever achieve the kind of scale you’d need to make it cheaper.IMO it is what it is. Especially when you consider the hardware kill switches etc this is a niche product that the right small audience will pay $1.2k for.
Why would over 1000$ not be acceptable for a niche product which is manufactured in small quantities?