Prime grade meat will stay that price or higher forever... manufactured protein will go down in price over time.

Sure costs will go down. But as far as price goes that's my point, it doesn't feel like they want it to go down.

It keeps being priced and pitched as a premium organic healthy food and not something everyone can afford.

I don't really understand this concern; this is a common strategy for introducing new products. When smartphones came out they were a premium product. Over time they became more accessible as the market grew beyond just the first adopters. They're arguably commoditized now, if we're thinking about super cheap Android phones.

Tesla is another example.

And economics should force price down, if the costs of manufactured protein decrease substantially.

It's not a fair analogy. Smartphones are still a premium product ($800 new). They were heavily subsidized by the mobile carriers which made them accessible. However, we are slowly seeing that subsidization eroding (fortunately now everyone is addicted).

I don't mean to be petty but it's not "economics" that drives prices down but rather competition. The thing about smartphones is while they all had dramatically different surface behavior, underneath they all shared very similar technological cores (Qualcomm processors, iOS/Android/Windows OS, etc...) and were able to utilize those same innovations.

Artificial meat on the other hand doesn't seem to be like that. Every product is unique and requires significant investment in R&D to make a reality.

They have been selling it for a long time now, it's not like this stuff is brand new. My only point was that we have not seen the effects you are describing happening yet which is worrisome. It feels like they are happy with product positioning at the moment.