I used to sell something kind of similar...high cost, niche electronics. We didn't make it easier for hobbyists because they would often want to return the item after playing around. Then we couldn't sell it as a new item. The depreciation hit was significant.

The hobbyists were also a drain on support time, disproportionate to other customers.

Once the market settled, and the devices were closer to commodity prices, and our knowledge base was in better shape, we opened back up to them.

Agreed. Right now there's basically an arms race going on in this field.

> they would often want to return the item after playing around

Then don't have a return policy.

> The hobbyists were also a drain on support time

Make them pay for support at a premium.

A company practicing your doctrine will get slammed for being user-hostile by everyone on hn and reddit. Probably sued in some countries, too.

>Then don't have a return policy.

You probably haven't encountered chargebacks as a merchant. "All sales final" only works for cash businesses.

"Not as described" covers a lot of ground for hobbyists struggling to deal with a complex electronics product.

Money is money but you are competing against players who will order hundreds or thousands of units. You are not worth their time for a couple thousands of dollars

Maybe you could buy them through a reseller or integrator. I work for a startup, we've ordered multiple of their devices, their lead time is 6-8 months for the older models. I think these new models are probably only for the big players in the first year or two who have orders in the millions of dollars scale.

This is pretty common for premium HW manufacturers. I've worked for a camera company who would not take orders that were not at least on the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both logistics and sales network is very expensive.

If you're doing that, your best bet is to talk to somebody like AutonomouStuff:

https://autonomoustuff.com/

They have a relationship with all the vendors, and can help figure out which sensor and vendor to use.

If you really really want a Velodyne unit, you might be able to get a loaner of the cheaper ones by calling them and talking to somebody, not so sure about the VLP-64 or new 128 as those go for north of $50-70k.

The cheapest lidar Velodyne makes goes for close to $10k, so you're still probably not going to be able click to buy.

And this space REALLY needs competition. I've found pricing elsewhere on a FEW of the items AS carries, and their markup is around 400%. Not a typo.

Small orders are much more expensive to deal with. Higher shipping and handling costs, extra customer support load, etc. Why bother selling a few hundred or thousand devices with all that overhead when you can focus on selling large volume orders? Their supply might also be constrained, and they want to focus on shipping the large orders first so they can cash their checks.

If you're not planning to order a few hundred thousand after the first 2, I wouldn't give you the time of day either.

This is intended to replace the HDL-64E, and the biggest fleet using them is Uber, and they've got ~200 test vehicles. It will be a while before any one outfit is placing orders in the 1000s.

> Sure... but if I've got the money

You don't if you can't buy 2000+ per year.