What makes you think that they don't have the money to build another Hadrian x? Or five? Or that they're not already building them?
If the truck part of the Hadrian x is approximately $150,000. I can't imagine the remainder of the machine being over $350000. These prices are just a ballpark estimate, but this shouldn't cost much more than what an excavator cost to build. When they were originally building the first two Hadrian Xs, I would be willing to bet that the tooling that they used to fabricate components we're not one off and thrown away. Meaning more pieces could be produced, at a lower price, if ordered. A lot of the development costs for those prototypes went into paying for tooling, to produce parts, to build the machines. The point is, component costs should be significantly cheaper once you start making more of them. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a couple sets of key components sitting in there shed.
For test and development cycles, you typically wait to accomplish large milestones before something is released to major production. IMO their manufacturing staff is likely working to understand needs, if not already manufacturing sub-assemblies that will feed into the final product. An example would be the router and internal block handling apparatus. I'm guessing they've already tested those thoroughly. The remainder of the testing going on is related to the telescoping boom and laying head.
We need to give these guys a little bit of credit. They are not sitting there twiddling their thumbs waiting to "start" commercializing. They are no longer a prototype shop, they have hired staff, and those people will continue to work on things unrelated to testing. All of the events going on do not run in series, they are running in parallel. It's the birth of an organization we are watching. Just from the recent videos of the machine I could tell they're engineers are working as a cohesive unit.
Again, 2019 will be an exciting year. Getcha popcorn ready!
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