Congratulations again!
Curious to see what your next product will be. The intuitive next step would be to go bigger, but I hope you will make another system in the travel market with 12V DC. Learn from the KiweeOne in use. Maybe target a much lower price and higher number of units.
1 Like
About pricing luke, Crowdfunding price is around 400 USD, retail price will be around 1000 USD.
Did you mean that to you, Crowdfunding price is still too high or are you talking about current retail price?
I was talking about the market of your next product after KiweeOne.
For me personally, being grounded in a place without very sparse wind, any price is too high.^^ Even though it would be really nice to hold one in hand and test it.
Perhaps there are two mixable possibilities in time:
-
Lower the price year after year, increasing the production.
-
Keeping the price then increasing the power year after year until hundreds W.
An example for the second possibility: now a Kiwee is 100 W. Assuming a Kiwee will be 200 W in a year: it is now paid and delivered in one year.
This is also a way to involve partners as Kiwee scales. This way would mix buying and investment.
1 Like
1 Like
I would say collect feedback from customers before decidibg where to go next. Sell the exact same model for some time still.
You could go for some of these features:
- more power
- more usability
- higher altitude
- lower price
- lower weight
I would say that given the fact that you have already found out that the market is probably there, the most interesting would be to pursue lower price as the most important one. Even perhaps reduce altitude and power to get there (depending on feedback). My second one would be more usability so that your customers who are not kite interested are still happy with the product.
One way to reduce weight and cost would be to go single skin kite. Second perhaps would be a soft kite rotor, perhaps with rings like Rod is using.
1 Like
I hope that you are not selling the crowdfunding product at a loss. So I’ll guess the cost to you for the product is between 200 and 300 euros. If you plan to sell it for a 1000 euros I expect the market from individual customers will be relatively small - but I’d be happy to be proven wrong. Businesses may see some value in it as an advertising platform.
I think that adds development time and with that cost. I would look at how the product is sourced and made, and how the business is run.
The cost of development is hard to quantify if you are a small company and the employees sometimes find time to test new stuff.
Having come so far, my guess is that @Kitewinder has a better guess about the next steps compared to us bystanders. Having an opinion is still fun though
2 Likes
Crowd price was around 60 % off @ 375 euros. So yes retail price is 900 euros not 1000 sorry.
Regarding benefit and production price, those questions are highly strategic sorry.
Just consider that average sales margin of any product is between 20 to 30 %.
Uses cases like phone charging and lighting are kiwee one’s use cases
1 Like
I know. I was thinking about which the wisest steps are for scaling small awes. For example what demand would your 500W to 1kW System address? Would it be wiser to design it for 500W or 1kW? What can one do with that power?
1 Like
I like how for water treatment a tank is enough to compensate for the intermittency of wind power.
Water treatment by electrolysis? What about desalination (by electrolysis)?
Olivier, for later do you envisage a crosswind version of kiwee, with automated take-off, flight by figure-eight or other, and landing?
All I know at the moment is that it will be a x5 to x 10 kiwee power with automatic launch and landing… Regarding crosswind flight, we might someday start to oscillates gently around zenith to slightly increase speed. Complete crosswind is more challenging. My guess is that crosswind awe will take at least 10 years to be fully operational, that leave us some time to test things.
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=US&NR=4251040A&KC=A&FT=D&ND=3&date=19810217&DB=&locale=fr_EP#
Loyd’s patent looks to represent a crosswind kite with crank then reciprocating transmission between the plane and the ground station, with members within the tether. So it is not a belt or rope-drive transmission.
US4251040A.pdf (617.2 KB)
That sounds like a really nice package. Good to see you really forward leaning in terms of releasing bigger/better products
Automatic launch and landing would require a drastically different design, won’t it? To me it seems more difficult than crosswind flight.
Could also be possible to get more out of the current design, especially a higher capacity factor, by getting it to higher altitudes. Longer distance between lifter and turbine to have a higher windspeed for the lifter before it needs to lift the turbine and a longer rope drive are probably worth investigating.
Why not just scale up the current design? (with wings that can be disassembled maybe)
Maybe target the same consumers (phone, radio, laptop, cooler) up to 100W, but useable all day with awes operating only a short time. This would require a major battery pack. Nothing one would use when hiking or biking, but possible on a boat or a car. Electric car charging would also be interesting.
This consideration leads us back to this:
1 Like
Kiwee one blades are already foldable.
We have been granted by ADEME, the French agency for climate environment and so on, to develop a 3 phases program, second phase is the product I described. So now we have to do it because we get money for that. As Luke said there is plenty possibility for kiwee. I don’t know If you have seen our latest videos but kiwee was outputting 250W. Best ever for us. Automatic launch will not be a major issue, you have to have the ability to inflate your soft kite, that pretty it… But we will see. Anyway I won’t start that product before kiwee success. I was thinking you guys will crucify me to says crosswind will be ready in 10 years 
2 Likes