The louis vuitton example isn’t particularly relevant. When people are motivated to buy luxury goods, status becomes a buyer want- it is hard to buy status without making unaffordable to most (which is what creates separation and thus status). A quartz watch, which costs $20, will always out perform a $5000 Swiss mechanical watch because the technology is better for accurate, all conditions time keeping. But people don’t buy Omegas because they tell the time better, they buy them for status.
Anyway, back to this topic. I feel the primary issue in the diy e-skate cost space is not the sellers. Under normal capitalist conditions, market pressures (supply, demand) will drive efficiencies and price reductions, the best sellers would survive and the buyers would be happy with the costs. But this assumes the industry isn’t competing solely on price. If it was to compete solely on price, this would be great initially for the consumer, but the producers would under-sell each other until only the company with the deepest pockets or most efficient process (often aligned to size/ scale) remained. Then it would become a monopoly, prices would likely increase again and innovation would be less.
I think the issue in the e-skate business is the mindset of all of us that are buyers are tethered to - we view it as a hobby, and our minds are programmed to believe skateboarding is a fun and relatively cheap hobby.
The problem with this is that in the last 3-4 years, the tiny industry that has grown, has discovered that e-skateboards are more like a transport problem, and less like a kids hobby problem. Sure, the enabling tech for e-skates came mostly from remote control hobbies, but we stand on our hobbies, drive it for 100s of miles on crappy roads at high speed, and trust it with our health and safety. None of this is a problem for rc toys, drones, or really, even traditional skateboards (because they don’t get pushed to that extreme).
So we tend to budget for a RC + skateboard, but that doesn’t truly capture the costs of increased safety, reliability, performance and range issues.
When our suppliers cater to our cost expectations, we get hobby grade stuff. Sure, it works, but how long, how reliably, and at what risk to the human riding it are topics which flood this forum daily.
If we framed this industry not as a hobby, but say as a legit transport device, we might perceive the costs differently. I’m using my board to commute daily. I’ve spent around 2300$ all up on stuff relating to it. I could own 20 boards before it cost the same as my car. Then, if I compare ongoing maintenance and fuel costs, I could replace my board yearly and still come out better off.
So I think the marketplace here is slightly distorted based on the immaturity of the entire industry. 2k for a skateboard is viewed as crazy. But only because a ton of people are sitting closer to RC hobbies or traditional skate board hobbies (because they are the connecting ideas), than they are to the realities what you really need or want in an e-skateboard.
The fact that new innovative products are still expensive, and still tend to fail (because we are trying to keep the development and manufacturing cost down so much), creates this perception in the buyers mind of a lack of value.
Anyways, perhaps the diy-estate veterans are the ones holding back this hobby/ industry. What we really need is sellers who create high quality, high reliability, high functionality, modular e-skate systems that can ship around the globe, giving the widest range of DIY-ers the chance to mix and match safely to design their own creations. The ‘price’ will be whatever the market allows it to be once those goals are being met. Sadly, that price will probably exclude many diy-ers who can’t afford the cost hike this needs, until economies of scale, large increase in mainstream buyers, and return on development costs kick in.