Mavic Air 2 Teardown - Parts Cost About $135
- Thread starter Airmaxx23
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But they don't or can't factor in the R&D cost of designing and developing a drone which frankly can't be as cheap as a cellphone (of which the tear down company is an expert in). From today's level of technology, anyone can download and read up reference designs for cellphones from qualcomm etc and they pretty much have 70 to 90% figured out. A 10km flying camera on the other hand, and every iteration better than the previous purely from IN HOUSE design improvement, now that cost that is not listed in the direct material cost.
Or all of the other costs that go into running a business and producing items. That person that answers the phones or handles questions when you go to HR don't work for free.
the cost of a product,no matter what it is used for ,has no real bearing on how much the individual parts that go into it cost
if you tried to build a vehicle using parts, then the cost would be many times what the parts cost originally on the production line in the factory
there are so many invisible costs that go into a product ,and it distribution and that is where the final purchase price comes from
if you tried to build a vehicle using parts, then the cost would be many times what the parts cost originally on the production line in the factory
there are so many invisible costs that go into a product ,and it distribution and that is where the final purchase price comes from
yes, that is taken for granted surely. I believe these costs are common to all business actually and so can be easily factored in by an experienced tear down company. What I wanted to highlight is that a Cellphone centric tear down specialist will hardly have a good grasp in the indirect costs to develop a flying, stabilised camera, which I believe only 3-4 companies in the world can do properly....in turn makes the cost estimations incredibly inaccurate and potentially misleading.
Even if someone breaks down a car to parts cost, it is not difficult to estimate the R&D costs because it is an established industry which can have lots of benchmarks and experienced insiders and outsiders to comment....Drones on the hand is such a niche.
Agreed. My comment was more of a thing that I think a lot of people don't realize that there are a myriad of other costs that go into getting a product to a store's shelf for $X.XX beyond what the individual components actually cost.
Try going to a high class fancy restaurant and tell the waiter you are only going to pay for the cost of the ingredients and see how that goes.
The R&D for the MA2 was super minimal couple tweaks to firmware. As has been noted pretty much off the shelf parts. The video chip you pretty much just buy it and hook it up.
The radio was already done again a couple of tweaks.
And for the amount of money It costs the QA is not so great really. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but these days cell phones almost never have issues. Television are usually perfect.
But when you have zero competition that’s how you roll. And it’s not their fault - you can’t blame them for gouging while They have a chance.
The radio was already done again a couple of tweaks.
And for the amount of money It costs the QA is not so great really. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but these days cell phones almost never have issues. Television are usually perfect.
But when you have zero competition that’s how you roll. And it’s not their fault - you can’t blame them for gouging while They have a chance.
emvision
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This one production line alone could cost tens of millions of dollars to design, construct, program and operate.
The production line saves them money.
Sure is a one time investment but it’s more than paid for itself 10 times over.
If it’s 80% off the shelf so much for hardware engineering and that 20% was the ESC which they already had designed.
The flight controller well they already have that design like I said just a couple of tweaks.
The radio system inside is just a copy of the
other radio systems.
The hull? not too much different from all the other Mavics
So you tell me where was the R&D?
Kyle76
Well-Known Member
What you call “tweaks” are actually redesigns that involve engineering, retooling, manufacturing, testing, marketing and distribution. A new Ford is more than just a few tweaks from the Model T. Every time you stuff more technology into a smaller package, you are making hundreds of design changes. And they all have to work. If it were so cheap and easy, DJI wouldn’t own 80% of the US market. “Gougers” get killed in the marketplace.
Lol A few adjustments to the PID values
I’ve built my own drone so don’t try to convince me otherwise. Every piece of the software is available open source.
Kyle76
Well-Known Member
Well when remote ID comes my kits Will let you have an experimental Drone - it won’t be subject to it
Building a drone is so easy you should give it a try
I've built dozens of quads myself, that doesn't mean you have insight into the work involved in designing and releasing a new drone. Do the ones you build have all of the sensors that are on the MA2? Is everything enclosed in a nice body? You getting 35 minute flight times with Intelligent Batteries?
if it’s that easy, autel, Skydio, Zino, powervision and maybe you yourself can easily “spend” $135 with “tweaks“ and “money saving production line” to produce a longer flying, further flying, better picture taking drone.
I mean many have tried, and it’s hard to see any other in the market.
all I’m saying is take both ends of the argument with a pinch of salt.
So why do you need any DJI products?
Nobody would argue that in these times it is relatively simple to build your own drone with off the shelf components. You don’t need any special skill or knowledge.
Are you really expecting anyone to believe the level of engineering/features/performance in the current DJI offerings can be realised without significant investment? That would be ignorant of the realities.
I completely agree with the last part of your post but it can take quite a bit of skill and knowledge to solder, program and properly tune a quad. Especially when you get into designing and 3D printing parts for it. All the orange TPU parts on this 4" quad (GPS mount, 2 - antenna mounts, motors guards) I designed and printed. It takes some skill.
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