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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

"Preorder". "Shipping Winter 2024".

"While we don't have any physical prototypes at the moment, we have the industrial design and also largely understand how this will be built."

No. You have to build it before you can sell it.

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Reminds me of Noria (later Kapsul), a somewhat early Kickstarter darling that promised to have revolutionized window air conditioners. Theirs would be quiet and light, and inexpensive ($250!), and would ship within a year, all they needed to do was raise $250,000!

The timeline graphic is still up here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kurt/noria-cool-redefin...

They raised nearly $1.5MM, because as it turns out, people will throw money at a solution that sounds amazing, regardless of their understanding of manufacturing and physics. They finally started delivering some five years later, and what they delivered amounted to a repackaged traditional window air conditioning unit. Still noisy, still heavy, and the build quality wasn't great. Cf. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2021/06/23/kapsul-air-conditi...

Johnson Controls does $20-$30 billion in annual revenue. They've swallowed up all kinds of other HVAC companies over the decades. Turns out, there's not a whole lot of innovation to be had in the HVAC world, because of the limitations of physics.

Nest, on the other hand, did some wildly overdue disruption on the control side of things, doing a little bit of math on historic local data to help figure out how to cycle radiators more efficiently, but for the most part, the cost savings tended to be from Nest suggesting that it's silly to be running your AC at 68 degrees F on a 98 degree day.

I appreciate there's an attempt to be transparent at the cost here, but "shipping winter 2024 even though we don't have a physical prototype" for an HVAC system is as big a red flag as there is, to me.

I was reminded of Noria/Kapsul as well. I paid the $1 for the chance to opt in later, so I was still getting their apologetic emails to customers as of last year, six years after backing.

The last email (May 2022) said they had delivered to ~700 backers, and had "a long way to go."

No further news since then.

I get where you're coming from. There's a lot of scope to this though, and not a lot of technical risk. I think in this case it makes sense to sell units, and also generate feedback about the product as early as possible. We're not selling fusion or self driving cars.

Where will you be building these?

I think in this case it makes sense to sell units, and also generate feedback about the product as early as possible

So you're going to use end customers as your test base? That's pretty gutsy. Especially when they're shelling out $10K and ripping out their existing (and working) HVAC system to do this. Don't use the car analogy here, there's no backup if it doesn't work.

Unless you predict 100% flawless execution and satisfaction on that aspect, you're going to get screwed. Your customers, more so. A few fucked up installations, or performance below expectations, and it's over.

Definitely agree that a good customer experience is key here. We're not shipping half baked hardware to end customers. That's what engineering development (alpha build, design validation build, production validation build, home pilot) is for. After all that happens, then customers can an install (and one that's well designed and tested).

I guess your definition of "feedback" is different than mine. Maybe that's a Tesla thing.

"We're not shipping half baked hardware to end customers. That's what engineering development (alpha build, design validation build, production validation build, home pilot) is for."

I can appreciate that. I am sure you will also agree a single part of a complex system can render it inoperable. When I consider the consequences, at 15° F (which is about the yearly low in my part of the US), of a failed part then I consider what that means to my wife and children and the value of the experimental but proven design becomes much less.

In this particular case, and given your background, I am not worried about your ability to build it. Yes, a bit easier than fusion energy :)

I am wondering, though... Why don't you make a prototype, and attach a webcam in front of it, with a few sensors, etc?

For their cheapest model, they want to sell it at $10k which includes profit, but they can't build a single working one before that? Several thousand to build a single functional prototype is a drop in the bucket comparatively. This instills absolutely zero confidence that they could build anything... because well they've apparently built nothing except a preorder website full of mockups.

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