Whenever I see companies like this with a spectacular demo but no product to show, I always think of the Richard Feynman quote, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
There is still a big step to make it cheap, reliable and appealing enough to be commercially successful, but "X is possible and we know how to do it" demo is good base to build from. My 2c.
See WaterSeer [0], SolarRoadways [1], Fontus self-filling waterbottle [2], ...
[0] https://www.waterseer.org/
That being said what we are seeing here is a education problem. The masses of people who (including government officials) who seem to be so gullible and lack basic science skills and critical thinking to understand how some of these technologies might work is astounding. And with the 3 efforts listed above it has slowly come out that the minds behind the idea did not know how it would all work either. A good example of that is fontus. This as dream big art design project. How awesome is that? We can make a 3d model of this cool device! A year later confessing to taking apart dehumidifiers to "understand" how they work as if it was some mistry. As if they could somehow crack this alien technology then they too could build one!
At the rate these too good to be true ideas are coming out one has to stop and think that maybe, just maybe, somebody is gaming the system.
http://www.space.com/26713-impossible-space-engine-nasa-test...
In space where flight also wasn't supposed to be possible -
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13556-10-impossibilit...
"Impossible" has been wrong before.
NASA and others are still testing those drives so last year might be a bit premature to write the idea off?
The 3 projects in the parents flat out don't work, and we know why they don't work -- or at least know to what extent they will work.
By the logic you have presented then we should be funding projects that wish to compress all 8 bit connotations into 7 bits. I can go make a nice video of how awesome it would be if we could do this. How it would change the world. Literally, if somebody could compress every 8 bit combination into 7 bits it would change the world overnight. Should we fund a product that advertises it could do this with a nice video and a website?
Your example busts your point wide open!
Anybody can come up with an product that if made would change the world. The hard part is coming up with a feasible idea that will change the world.
Not a single one of the projects listed in the parent ever produced a viable working prototype. They sold a promise they could not keep. Yet keep taking money.
I'm not sure if the people responsible are even aware that it won't work - they might be 'scamming' without knowing, due to lack of common sense. It's really sad and enrages me more than it should.
Pedlars of snake oil have featured in cautionary tales since time immemorial.
Even if the technology is feasible and there's a working prototype, there's still a lot of work to do to get it mass produced, and problems and unanticipated expenses can crop up all along the way, especially for people who've never gone through the process before.
Next had terrible sales.. even jobs said so. The factory they built was so underutilized, they assembled the computers by hand instead of using the equipment because it was less work than doing the maintenance on it. It was designed to produce 150,000 machines a year... next sold 50,000 machines total over 6 years (an average of 700/month).
After 6 years, Next abandoned the computer market, focusing on software. They tried to sell the factory to Canon, who pulled out of the deal. They laid off 2/3rds of their employees.
On multiple occasions, investors were forced to put in more funding just to keep Next solvent.
Just a couple of years after abandoning hardware, they agree to merge with apple.
I wasnt able to find an exact number, but the amount of money apple paid for next may actually exceed the total revenue next pulled in during the 12 years they were in business.
A better, if flawed, comparison to Lily might be the Apple I: entering an established, growing market with a product which lowers the threshold for adoption in very specific ways. (I'll defer to more informed, educated, and insightful individuals to carry this comparative analysis any further...)