Hey, I'd love to see this bike at (a wildly unrealistic) $500~$700!

IMHO that's on purpose, as is the final (?) Curl version abandoning Dr. Hon's intriguing original ideas and turning the no-longer-curling Curl into son-of-Brompton. Brompton the company announced two years ago (read about it on Bike EU or watch some of the Brompton videos) they had plans to expand from 50K bikes/year to 100K bikes/year by 2022 and expand aggressively into China - coincidentally Dahon's largest market. (Fun fact: because China's population is >20X that of the UK, there are more affluent urban folks in China than middle class folks in the entire UK.) In December 2016 Brompton completed their move to a manufacturing space that will allow that planned expansion. I think Dahon priced the Curl both as their brand's 'halo' product and also defensively to prevent Brompton from establishing itself as the premier folding bike on the Chinese market.

I could be wildly, utterly, completely wrong, of course.