Jerry, HK never told me anything, and probably only responded to about one in six emails I sent them over the years on even mundane topics. I must admit, I was very surprised when they first released it at a price somewhere around $50-$60 USD. I was just hoping and praying it would come in under $100, because it is not a cheap board to make. It cost me a lot more than $50 to make my prototypes, so I thought their full price was quite the bargain. Then they put it on sale multiple times for $40 or less, which was truly incredible. I don't mind admitting, I bought some of my own product at that point, it was too good a deal to pass up. There is no way they were making any money at the sale price, and probably they weren't making much at the full price either.
I don't know what criteria they used to set the price, or to gauge success, but they are a very big company and if I had to guess their strategy was to make money through add-on sales, which they certainly have the means to track. They charged $13 for the
Tamiya adapter set which is just a couple wires that would cost pennies to assemble. Possibly they were hoping people would also buy a tank from them, but they have a very small selection and their tank prices are not competitive when you account for their shipping fees. No doubt I did help them sell some radios though, and XCar 45 ESCs, but maybe not enough to make it worthwhile to continue. The dissatisfaction and hassle the arose from their flawed production in the beginning also clearly hurt any profitability, as they spent money fixing bad boards and time dealing with customer complaints.
Even if they made nothing at all, they do routinely adopt open source projects like this in order to stay in the center of what is currently popular and to remain a player in whatever the hip new thing is. Similar open source projects to this one, but for the quad/drone community, have really taken off in recent years and created a legion of participants and enthusiasts (ie, customers), not to mention massive demand for associated bits and bobs. But nothing to do with tanks is probably ever going to be hip or popular, it is such a niche market. Of course I
personally think tanks are a million times more interesting than quads, which I have flown, and which get old in about five minutes. But that's just me, and you know, it's 2019. I'm a dinosaur, as are most of the people on this forum.
Salmon, I have not tried crowdfunding but I did consider it in the early stages. There is plenty of discussion about the economics of this project and why it evolved in the manner that it did, in this thread and others. Anyway, I am definitely considering all options and will keep the community updated if anything transpires.