Originally Posted by
gsa103
A cycling power meter is expensive because strain gauge installation is challenging and labor intensive. There's a ton of calibration factors that need to be include. The strain gauge itself is dirt cheap, getting reliable data from one is an engineering project.
Right. You take all the R&D which includes the huge labor sum mentioned above and essentially that's a fixed investment. You divide that by the number of units you plan on selling over some period and that's the unit cost you have to recoup. You also need a profit to make the owners happy.
The final price gets influenced by other internal costs plus the impact of competition and other economic factors.
Imagine how large that investment cost is. Then divide that by how many power meters of a particular brand are in use. That gives an idea of why they cost so much.