Sorry if 1EU/Watt seemed like something Kiwee should do from France. It was just a daydream of what price-point could sell in the tough kite novelty world market I know. 1eu/W would more likely be possible from China, by some other architecture at ~500W rated, like a power-kite/groundgen, with possible super-low kite costs (see Pansh prices, 89usd for nice 3m2 power kite).
The notorious high-tech business strategy of selling premature junk to gain early market share is NOT Kiwee’s stategy. Obviously Kiwee intends a high quality product without immediate competition in a race to market. American business norms are more Wild West. Google is a multiplely-convicted criminal in EU, but not for cooking our AWE search results for years, which Google has gotten away with. I promise no one comes knocking if some little guy in Texas used a bootleg CAD program. China is even wilder.
A lot of misunderstanding is simple cultural differences between France and others, that Pierre also seems to not fully account for. I was amazed how irritable French customs officials acted toward my Italian WoW friends, when we crossed the country returning from AWEC2011 in a large rented recreational vehicle, but the Italians said it was normal. Of course Italians also seem comically irritable, by Texas norms.
Hoping Pierre is right about Kiwee business strategy as “for the best”. Looking at the “personal power station” market, there is a lot of competition surging for the admirable build of such a unit by the Kiwee partner. Its quite a challenge to prevail in world markets with novel AWE products. Google is no good at it.
I think Kiwee is on a good track, tech and price wise. Of course the simpler and cheaper, the bigger market share.
Right now I dont think you will see much in terms of competition, but a chinese (or other country) knockoff will come at one point if you have reasonable success. To survive that its just a matter of staying competitive and keeping your customers happy…
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In the hobby and power kite industry, the only IP and manufacturing survivors of 1980’s era “Chinese Piracy” were those who developed their own Chinese partners. Today we all have our close Chinese kite networks, and nobody complains, because our Chinese partners help us compete. Whoever wins in AWE must have Asian partners, if the kite industry is any guide.
Cory Houle is acting as Academic AWE’s early ambassador to China, to start to catch-up the school-incubated AWE ventures to decades of kite manufacturing relations that figures like Peter Lynn and his peers have.
The trend of great production and even design innovation is toward places like Viet Nam and Siri Lanka, so we are talking about a pan East Asian design and production juggernaut. The right partner will improve designs, not just build cheaper.
The problem with this issue is that you are giving everything away to the asian guys. I dont mind cheap stuff or competition from asia, but if every new product you invent, you first move production, then R&D (naturally to further save costs), where does that leave yourself?
Reality is a mix of accepting difference in costs and never letting go of work created locally to outside people. Its not that the French guys are superior. Just if you happen to be a french (or norwegian) guy who created a new market from scratch, why just give it away? Better to hold on to the interesting workplace created and try to make it work.
The kite industry is not “giving everything away to the Asian guys”, but able to sell more kites to more people. Apple only became number one with Asian help. I am with the Asian guys, rather than be a loser without them.
Disclaimer: Michael Lin is a longtime friend in Austin, Texas; the founder-owner of New Tech Kites, a number one world kite store brand based on his family connections in China. I also have warm relations with Peter Lynn’s Chinese kite makers (who use kPower photos to sell kites), and Pansh Power Kites, (that I helped with US Customs clearance). These are strategic kPower partners. Both sides need each other.
I have briefed Michael on Kiwee progress in recent years, and offered Olivier an entre into the kite store market via the top KTAI network.
I dont have anything against any other people. Just the notion that every time some new workplace is created, it should by some force of nature move its production and R&D to China…
If you cannot look at history and see many examples of products/work/activities being moved from Europe/USA/? to Asia in this manner, maybe you should look into that to balance out your opinions. China has a long history of copying and stealing good stuff, with support from the government.
I would also like to add that I would never choose to move my activities to China simply due to its poor human rights record.
China’s human rights record IS bad, but Europe and my Texas in some ways have worse records, depending on what metrics are applied. As activists, we want the world liberated. If class inequality is a core world human rights dimension, Norway is hardly innocent.
The “force of nature” here is wind, and kites are the tool. China’s kite history is unmatched. If you buy and fly Chinese kites for your sport enjoyment, you are already self-implicated. We have to fix China and Norway.
The common concern is wrongful domination by power elites anywhere, and AWE as a world-changing technology than can help or harm social justice on a vast scale. Perhaps we should create an AWE topic that goes beyond Kiwee’s starting place in world affairs.
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The discussion goes off-topic.
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Then write something on topic.
Kiwee, and France’s manufacturing roles today closely connect to global manufacturing (“China”). I have started another topic for AWE Geopolitics, for discussion beyond the scope of the Kiwee topic, like EU’s general relation to AWES manufacturing.
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I am curious how Norway and China are comparable in the human rights scale. Norway is not without its issues, but people here are free to speak their minds on any issue…
(sorry for being off topic, the discussion continues elsewhere)
The human rights scale is global. Only a tiny percentage of the world can enjoy Norway directly by accident of birth or wealth, and its freedom of speech, because its an exclusive gated community; much like the US in that moral regard. The world’s poor tend to be stuck with post-colonial outcomes, where freedom of speech is denied.
In today’s news, in Austin, Apple will be sending our locally developed manufacturing tech to China. That’s what we do, export our art, to then pivot to the next manufacturing frontier. It will be the same with AWE. We also export our Texas loud-mouth social values, for better or worse, from the belly of one Beast to the other; heck, its really just the same Beast.
AWES are a new beast to wrangle.
Woow, watch out kiwee propeller. It can now handle 100 km/h and still feels really well.
Max recorded peak power for kiwee is now reaching 550 W.
We might experience a small delay for first delivery due to electronic card delay ( 7 months delay ) .
have a good day
olivier
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This new propeller looks stronger than the previous one. Is it as light?
100 km/h as tip speed, or is it the belt speed (the previous being 40 km/h as I remember)?
550W: it is huge! Olivier, have you the wind speed?
Looks to be the only one AWES that progresses.
100 km/h is the maximum wind velocity that the propeller can handle. we test it like that :
The propeller is a lot more stronger, you are right. Blade weight : 85g
On kiwee we made hundreds and hundreds of small improvement while developping. That is what will hopefully makes kiwee great!
Belt speed is between 20 to 40 km/h . 550W is the maximum power output recorded but I don’t have the track of corresponding windspeed, I will ask the technicians.
Nevermind our pek power, kiwee is still sell for 100 W at the moment.
We must do better than progressing, we need to deliver to our early adopter. First plan was august ( 10 days, glups ) but electronics cards have come really late.
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100 km/h is hardly imaginable, even above HAWT cut-out speed and far above their rated speed. With a blade weight of 85g it is hard to beleive. What a progress!
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Yep, it is really great. We have really talented people here . About weight, it might be compared to giant blades. if somebody knows their weight , we could compare
here is a blade test we performed last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlxcOo-hN9U
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100 km/h may happen quite fast if you were to implement some kind of crosswind flight… Again I am impressed with your progress.
Here is what we observe with our blades. Above a certain wind speed, the blades start to loose their profils and thus performances stall on a constant output power. That is really going in a great way because we can generate up to a great speed, let’s say 70 km/h wind speed and then the power stall so that the system keep being stable up to 100 km/h.
We began to test in strongs conditions 2 years ago with a recorded gust wind speed of 90 km/h and 60 km/h constant. The kiwee did well at that time. We made a lot of improvements to the generator. Now It is really a lot more resistant to conditions : forces, sand and dust, water.
The upper part can handle continuous 300W output power now. Fist time we fly our first prototype we output 14 W for 5s. That was the start
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Happy to see an AWE team that is not clueless. 
