According to this article, this very ordinary looking quadcopter from AirCover Solutions that's being promoted to US police forces costs $40,000 to $60,000. Can anyone explain why?
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According to this article, this very ordinary looking quadcopter from AirCover Solutions that's being promoted to US police forces costs $40,000 to $60,000. Can anyone explain why?
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments
@Jani
The door analogy is so true in the state, government and any other less responsible kind of ownership. But I think that here in Europe those things are slowly changing due to financial crisis. In my sector (LIDAR & photogrammetry) the prices went down by a factor of 4-5 in last 5 years. Unfortunately for me for sure but not so for an ordinary tax payer.
Someones getting a kick back!!! I suppose its like in the ROV industry a normal Hydraulic valve goes for a couple of dollars and you slap the name ROV subsea onto it and hey Presto, you can sell it for $1000...
One my friend told a joke about "heavenly gates" construction project. St. Patrick initiated a door repair project and invited 3 persons on bidding, German, Indian and Chinese. First came German engineer and said hmm it costs 6000 USD to fix your gates as we need to make 100% of proffit and doors will cost 3000 USD for us. St. Patrick on that, oh gosh 6k well let's see.
After that an Indian came and he said that we need also 100% of proffit but as our doors costs only 1000 USD do your price will be 2000 USD. St. Patrick again oh gosh well at least it's a bit better offer.
On last it was Chinese engineer who came and he said too that ok as we too need to make 100% of proffit price will be 8000 USD for you. St.Patrick on that hmm how come 8k. Chinese started to explain, well you know we give 4000 USD for you and then we buy doors and assembly with 2000 USD from Indians so after all we do make that 100% of profit.
Guess who won the bidding ;)
Ps. this is purely fictional story so don't take it too seriously..
"The LifeSaver 425 automatically (yes, automatically!) hovers when you release the controls"
THAT'S AMAZING!
Guy, there's no way there's $60,000 of development in each one of those (it also wouldn't surprise me if they had an open source autopilot under the hood!). They're selling them for that much for one reason, because they can. The sergeant in the article said it costs $400-600 an hour plus $3,000,000 for a helicopter. The little drone could be twice as much ($120,000) and people would still buy it to "save money" over a helicopter. Make hay while the sun shines but that kind of markup won't last for long when departments realize they can get the same thing elsewhere for a fraction of the cost.
Because they can charge the military/police force virtually whatever they want
The first image in their gallery has a GoPro camera strapped to the bottom of the copter. You know those little cameras go for about $59,000 these days.
Chris, Why not call the contacts mentioned on here and offer them a better deal? Seriously.
Travis: If you're having issues, please contact tech support. That's what they're there for. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to get the same performance from ArduCopter as a commercial system.
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