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Comment by pkaye | Hacker News Reader

$500 for the PearlVision product and you have to supply your own phone for the display. That is some hefty markup. You can get some decent ones that include a display in the range of $50-$150 on Amazon.

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I'm sure they're just intending for this to be an initial product, but I agree, I don't understand their business plan at all. The people willing to pay 3x over a "good enough" backup camera are also the people who'd be first in line to buy a new car with all the bells and whistles in the first place. The market for this product has to be exceedingly small.

what if the business plan is 'get acquired by another company looking to get into the self-driving car business'?

It wouldn't be surprising if they're angling to be acqui-hired. I think that's why they're so forthright about the Apple pedigree.

What would they be offering to that company, they haven't shown any prowess for integrating into the cars systems. Besides don't most car manufactures have self-driving features under development/deployed already?

I'm not saying it's a _good_ idea :P

You think that people willing to spend $500 would rather just spend tens of thousands instead for the same value proposition?

the tens of thousands is for all the other similar value propositions they'd want in a car.

Come on, that's just silly and it's a deliberate strawman. The options are not just between a $500 camera and a brand new car. The whole point is that the type of person who eschews the myriad of much cheaper camera options is also the type of person least likely to own a car that doesn't already have a built-in backup camera.

Seems to me the main advantage is that you don't have to wire anything up (or pay someone else to do that).

And personally I already mount my phone for navigation & music, so I wouldn't WANT to have the extra display.

I definitely don't want a backup camera display that I can't see without unmounting my phone.

I paid about $75 for a rear view camera setup on Amazon and another $75 for someone to install it in an hour hooked into the existing entertainment display. No worry about wires, charging, etc. Still better than a $500 product which needs a phone that I need to mount and dismount, charge, etc.

There are tons of wireless / wifi backup cameras already. The top search on amazon for such a beast is under $40...

Seems like they also copied Apple's pricing strategy

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