Comment by Paul Marsh on August 9, 2011 at 1:47pm

Corporate overhead?

Comment by Edward Strickland on August 9, 2011 at 1:48pm

Its obviously the car that costs the most.....is it an impala?

Comment by DaveyWaveyBunsenBurner on August 9, 2011 at 1:57pm

Ill take two, plus spares...

Comment by Dario Lindo Andres on August 9, 2011 at 2:26pm

Already said Supertramp...

Crisis...?? What Crisis??

Comment by Julian on August 9, 2011 at 2:29pm

I usually take the "they have to pay for the engineering" standpoint but there isnt any way that $40,000+ worth of engineering could have gone into that....

Comment by MarcS on August 9, 2011 at 3:04pm

Julian, I suppose your usual point also fits here...

Think of:

-Made to be used by Police

-probably including training and service...

-(hopefully) designed and tested for reliability

From this point of view I agree to the price tag (isn´t the Raven the same price region? I don´t see it there...)

Comment by Toby Mills on August 9, 2011 at 3:30pm

its easy, add up all the hours that have gone into developing the APM platform and times it by maybe $200 an hour. Then add up all the hours building and tuning it to work on a specific platform and times them by $200.

Then add up all the hours spent filing and negotiating the certificate of authorization and times that by $200 as well. $200 is a common internal charge out rate for specialists in corporates.

 

Then add up the cost of providing support and training for however long you get for free as part of the price.

Then take that total amount and divide it by the number of units you think you can sell.

Then work out the cost of building each unit and add that on.

Then add all that up and add in a margin.

If it took a team of 12 people a year then thats 25,000 man hours to design, build and get certification for.

12 might seem a lot, but you have managers, specialists, lawyers and a sales team etc, it soon adds up.

On those numbers that would cost Boeing $5million dollars in labour and resources to build it.

Lets say they think they can sell 150 of them then thats $33,000 per unit it dev cost.

At a $50,000 price tag then they have to sell 100 of them just to break even.

I'm not defending the price, but I am saying that its impossible to compare a model where we provide our labour for free against a corportate model where ever second of work costs real money.

 

Now, if they could sell 30,000 of then the dev cost is only $166 so it becomes a consumable item.

Its all basic economics 101, supply and demand.

The reality is, that on a global economic scale, the demand for these things is not massive, its not a consumer device, so the price is going to reflect that.

Comment by eduardo on August 9, 2011 at 3:50pm

Wow ... how they can fly 40minutes with a conventional HELI ?

i have some class450, 2 class 600 and one class90 and never fly more than 20minutes ever in hover .

can any one Xplain ?

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on August 9, 2011 at 3:54pm

eduardo: the article says 24 minutes. Where are you seeing 40?

Comment by Sean Skirvin on August 9, 2011 at 4:09pm

Don't forget about the pretty metal case that I'm sure that comes with. Plus they have to fly some guy to Anytown USA, and put him up in a hotel to train the customer to use it.

Comment

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next ›
• Page