Interesting discussion. After I received funding for Cerevellum, I put a lot of thought into actually building the Hindsight in South Carolina since all of the development was being done here. There were a lot of incentives too. The plan was to mold the enclosure state-side but have all of the internal electronics constructed overseas and then shipped here for final assembly, packaging, QC, etc. While we may look into doing this in the future, it just didn’t make financial sense at the time when taking things like logistics in mind. Duties between countries for various components, shipping costs, etc. And the fact that the majority of the product was already being manufactured overseas…well, it just made things significantly more complicated. Considering our limited resources, it really wasn’t possible.
Now, keep in mind, this is for a product that comes in a box the same size as a Nintendo DS. Shipping charges are very minimal and the units can be flown in rather than spending a month on the water, tucked away in some shipping container. When the product gets too big to offset shipping costs (say, for instance, a kayak), then domestic manufacturing starts to make sense.
Not really sure what my point is. I don’t have one other than to say America needs to put focus on advanced research and development rather than trying to be a manufacturing state.