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Sounds like an arms race to me. Native propel kind of revolves their entire sales campaign 'suggesting anyway' that trying to fish without reverse is totally impossible, and why their system is so superior. I don't fish at all and could care less either way. It just ends up we will be paying more for the Hobie kayaks we all like moving forward with yet another useless feature (in my opinion).
Same applies with all the new super fancy seats on kayaks these days, basically all super complex lazy boy lounge chairs, way over priced (not just Hobie, seems all brands). All the kayak manufacturers are putting these expensive seats on all their kayaks, driving the basic cost up even further.
I always felt Hobie to be really innovative with their products. We have a Tandem Island (our current one is a 2012), and we love the boat, our first TI cost $4250 back in 2010, now the exact same boat is $6500, now with the super fancy seat ( I really had no complaints with the old seat), and a reverse taper bow (that I doubt means a hill of beans to performance), the rest of the changes are mostly just improvements in manufacturing (something that is normal and expected anyway).
Now the cost for the mirage drives will likely be going up once again, with a feature I would likely never have any use for, just making the unit way more complex (for no apparent reason, besides putting a finger Natives eye), the new more complex drive will likely be more likely to break, and likely much more expensive to repair.
My wish would be for Hobie to concentrate their efforts more on cost reduction efforts vs just making everything more fancy and more complex (a true arms race, demonstrating who has the best fancy gadgets).
A perfect example of this is the ever increasing weight of Hobies kayaks using a really old process (Rotomolding, 30-40 yr old tech). Yes Hobie is very good at it, but rotomolding is a very slow process, and very limited as to the materials that can be used via rotomolding. Thus the very soft hulls that warp very easily. The typical cycle time for a rotomolded kayak is around 2-3 hrs. Making it pretty hard to produce enough boats to keep up with demand (why we have to wait 6 months when new model come out is because they can only produce about a dozen or so a day).
Also the plastic required for rotomolding is really special stuff, typical cost for these materials is north of $3.50 a lb. But the global cost for polyethylene is around $.50 cents/lb.
Sure 30 yrs ago rotomolding was really cool, but technology has advanced way beyond that now and I feel Hobie is living in the past overlooking the obvious (sticking to a dead horse way too long in my opinion)
My opinion is instead of making everything more and more fancy (and driving the costs way up, out of my affordability range now) why not concentrate some of their fantastic engineering capabilities going back to the basics, review every aspect of their manufacturing and look for ways to make their fantastic products more cost efficient, so more people can enjoy their incredible technology, everything still revolving around their patents (mirage drives).
First place I would start is the hull itself, a 100lb kayak hull at $3.50/lb material cost is $350 bucks in materials alone, not including the 2-3 hrs it takes to rotomold it, bringing their cost up to I would guess around $500 bucks just to make the darn thing, and only being able to produce a dozen or so a day has to really hurt. My opinion is Hobie is over looking the obvious (this happens in industry).
Why not switch over to an injection molding process where they can mold a hull in five minutes or so using materials that only cost maybe a buck a lb which are actually stronger and way more durable (because you are not limited by your process). With injection molding they can go from 12 kayaks a day to 12 kayaks an hour.
Also injection molding is way more accurate so you can eliminate almost all secondary operations, plus all the internal components (rudder lines, pulleys can be pre-assembled much more easily (you can hire people with shorter arms (lol)). Also insert molding structural components (like metal structural inserts becomes much easier and way less expensive). These days we can mold in tongue and groove seams and there are many adhesives available these days for final assembly using way more modern techniques.
Think about how many kayaks Hobie produces and the floor space all this requires (rotomolding machines are huge) and the number of employees just to run the operation. Also consider their electric bill, it takes a lot of money to create all that heat. Just converting to injection molding would reduce their electric bill 90%. Plus they could produce 10 times more boats with 1/4 the factory space, and 1/4 the number of employees. All that stuff is available on the market and readily available today, Hobie only needs to open their eyes to what is out there. They are sharp people, hopefully they will figure it out. I don't really care one way or another, what they do, it's just I'm a big Hobie fan but the cost of their stuff has now exceeded by budget.
Sometimes people just can't see the forest thru the trees.
Hey don't shoot the messenger, just stating the obvious....
Don't get me wrong, I will likely be buying a mirage 180 as soon as they are available, coolest invention ever, but ignoring everything else is a huge mistake in my opinion. Especially since you can only get Hobie kayaks and Mirage drives from Hobie, a pretty protected market.
All just my opinions
FE
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