U.S. manufactured microcontrollers can be had for < $100 for instance. With the parts, the assembly per unit must take on the order of minutes. How do you get to $10,000?
Chinese manufactured microcontrollers can be had for <$0.10, bought in bulk.
I used to work on an FIRST robotics team in high school; every year we had to fundraise ~$20,000 for the component cost (not labor for software or hardware) of our USA-made robot chassis. Our robots were bigger, but that really only amounted to a larger aluminum frame. And just so you know, our assembly period took around 6-8 weeks (and we didn't have to miniaturize anything).
If you insisted upon making everything here in America, I legitimately would not be surprised if you ended up with a multi-thousand dollar component bill for each model sold. The reason why China beats us is because they can mass-produce everything needed for the supply chain of these machines, and we cannot.
distribution of consumer electronics can mark up the price with 30%-50% and then the retailer adds another 30%-50%, and then the cost of transporation needs to be paid, there is the cost of storage, sales tax, etc etc
so a $1,000 MSRP consumer electronics item might need to be manufactured for a cost of $100-$200.
i think that if one wants to make products in the US, the cost of distribution and retail and transportation needs to be addressed, and it seems nobody wants to touch that hot potato
talldayo|1 year ago
I used to work on an FIRST robotics team in high school; every year we had to fundraise ~$20,000 for the component cost (not labor for software or hardware) of our USA-made robot chassis. Our robots were bigger, but that really only amounted to a larger aluminum frame. And just so you know, our assembly period took around 6-8 weeks (and we didn't have to miniaturize anything).
If you insisted upon making everything here in America, I legitimately would not be surprised if you ended up with a multi-thousand dollar component bill for each model sold. The reason why China beats us is because they can mass-produce everything needed for the supply chain of these machines, and we cannot.
b20000|1 year ago
so a $1,000 MSRP consumer electronics item might need to be manufactured for a cost of $100-$200.
i think that if one wants to make products in the US, the cost of distribution and retail and transportation needs to be addressed, and it seems nobody wants to touch that hot potato