We've talked a lot about specs and demos, but how come the price of the Rabbit R1 is so low?
There are several things that surprise about the entry-level Rabbit R1. It can be your design directly in collaboration with Teenage Engineering and full of personality. They may be its capabilities with the LAM and what we can do in the future with him or even the fact that be able to sync with Google apps.
But what really surprised me about the Rabbit R1 when I saw the presentation and what encouraged me to buy it without hesitation were 2 reasons. The first is that it did not have a monthly subscription like its "rival" the Humane AI pin —for which you have to pay a little more than €20 per month—.
And definitely, the price of the Rabbit R1 was extraordinarily cheap compared to the competition, which exceeds €600. Unlike the previous one, The Rabbit R1 has a price of €200 excluding possible customs and shipping costs, they are 3 times cheaper than their closest competitor.
Jesse Lyu's idea was always something cheap and accessible
In the interview that Jesse —creator of the Rabbit R1 and CEO of Rabbit Inc.— gave to StrictlyVC in Los Angeles, they talked about the subject, since even today it still seems unreal that a device with the capabilities that the Rabbit R1 seems to have is so cheap and accessible to everyone.
In it, the CEO says verbatim:
The R1 is the result of taking risks. Let's not make a $1000 device,
let's not make a $500 device with subscriptions, let's make a $200 device without subscriptions
The idea that the price of the Rabbit R1 would be the cheapest possible was always in the company's mind, since its intention was always that accessibility took precedence over everything else, and for this it had to be greatly refine production costs and that way get a low price.
Rabbit doesn't care about money
That's another of Jesse's main ideas. Although it has confirmed that they do not lose money despite being such a cheap device and that it is still profitable, After successive rounds of financing Rabbit Inc. has accumulated a large amount of funds to be able to make your device a reference.
In addition to this, Rabbit teamed up with Perplexity and not only that, but also for each pre-sale order, the company granted a Completely free annual subscription to Perplexity valued at 200$, exactly the same as the gadget itself cost, so we can say that it has paid for itself from the start.
In addition, the Rabbit team is extremely small, so the costs were still very modest, being able to contribute that extra money to the development and manufacturing of the device, although it must be said that In recent months they are hiring people to be able to monopolize all the shipments and continue working on the software.
Low production costs
At no time has the company confirmed what its production costs are - with the acronym BOM in English, Bills Of Materials - so we do not know exactly how much the device costs, although I imagine that as soon as we have it in our hands we will be able to get an idea of the quality of the materials.
Ultimately, Jesse has created a device well below the normal price, so I encourage you to stop by through the creators' website and if you are lucky you will be able to buy it before the first 100,000 units run out and you will get the Perplexity Pro membership completely free.
