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If they’re giving it away for free, that must mean there is a fatal flaw they could never design around and are confident nobody else will either. What’s the p

If they’re giving it away for free, that must mean there is a fatal flaw they could never design around and are confident nobody else will either. What’s the point then? At least tell us why it’s a dead end.

ben_w 5y ago
Or that they just don’t see how it’s a market fit for their business.
- fallat 5y ago
  This. They did excellent internal work, decided it's not for them, but did something good and want to share it. Just because it's not profitable for them doesn't mean it was a waste - they can use their new knowledge in other areas.
- dogleash 5y ago
  Que? Isn't "don’t see how it’s a market fit" just startup speak for "it's not economically viable"? That would fall squarely into the category of design failures I was talking about. It's not like we don't know any mechanism to cause condensation from air.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    It's not economically viable with their usual profit margin, on a market large enough to pay for their fixed costs, with the suppliers and labor they have around, and a lot of other constraints. That doesn't mean it's useless for everybody. So they publishing it may improve somebody's life.
  - rat9988 5y ago
    Lowering cost by manufacturing at scale is knowledge they don't have, and they do need to make it financially viable. Other people might have it and make it viable.
icegreentea2 5y ago
Here's their summary blog post: https://x.company/blog/posts/sharing-project-h2e-with-the-world/ https://x.company/blog/posts/sharing-project-h2e-with-the-wo... Allow me to snip a few quotes: "After three years of work, the team felt confident they could build a device that would produce water for $.10 per liter; however, it would have taken significant development work and iteration to prove feasibility at $.01 per liter. Additionally, the next phase of work for the project looked to be heavily focused on hardware integration and mass production expertise — not X’s sweet spot." And: "Given these factors, it became clear that X wasn’t best suited to take the work forward, and one of the best ways X could have an impact now on the problem of access to safe drinking water was to share what we’ve learned." I have no idea what the prior state of the art of modelling viable areas for harvesting was (I presume this is probably where X made the largest contribution). As the blogpost identifies... X is not really the best group to tinker with large scale, low cost manufacturing prototyping and scale up.
- dekhn 5y ago
  this is just standard boilerplate at X which really means "the team and/or the executive sponsoring the project got bored and/or realized things required more professional work, and/or the idea wasn't really that great in the first place and the exterior world realized that"
usrusr 5y ago
The ad market for targeting the water deprived turned out to be smaller than expected?
photochemsyn 5y ago
I read their "Patent Non-Assertion Pledge", it's hard to interpret - they seem to retain lots of rights, as far as I can tell, it's not really 'giving it away for free'. Anyone wanting to develop this as a commercial product would probably have to call a lawyer first.
- czbond 5y ago
  https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/H2E%20Patent%20Non-Assertion%20Pledge.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/H2E%... They won't sue you for using the findings or design, but they still have U.S. Patent on it and our pledging that Google will not sue those who use this intellectual property nor will anyone they transfer the patent to be able to sue. What they call "infringement" just means that since they hold a patent others "copying" it would technically be infringing the patent - but they pledge not to sue.
jker 5y ago
Possibly they've already derived all the PR value from it they can, and further development of it wouldn't be a good ROI for them. Cynical take, to be sure, but also the most realistic one.
extrapickles 5y ago
They likely had trouble making it cheap and durable enough for the target market. Looking at the design files, the unit is quite fragile, thanks to the cheap vacuum formed plastic. What needs to be done is using some of the GIS tools they released to find good locations for air->water setups, is figure out what materials and manufacturing techniques are available in those locations. This way you are more likely to design something that makes a difference. Anything built with materials or techniques that are not local will break, and they will be unable to repair because they do not have access to either the materials or the tools needed to do repairs.
pdevr 5y ago
There may be multiple reasons for this, some of which may be those you stated, but couldn't altruism be at least an important part of the reason they shared this?
toothpicked 5y ago
They don't opensource modern Google Search and it is also flawed...
carabiner 5y ago
It just looks like a proof of concept. They tested it in very controlled conditions. Did not see how it withstands being knocked over, dropped, covered in dust from storms. Their market is Africa. How many of the towns have road access? Will the product be damaged in transport on very rough roads? Can they be stacked in transport, and how many high (or will they be crushed)? Will adhesives fail after n temperature cycles in the blazing sun + nighttime cold? Can it be repaired by people living there? Almost every part looks to be made from scratch. The only thing off the shelf is the pink insulation foam. Can any of this be sourced in the target markets?

ben_w 5y ago

Or that they just don’t see how it’s a market fit for their business.

fallat 5y ago
This. They did excellent internal work, decided it's not for them, but did something good and want to share it. Just because it's not profitable for them doesn't mean it was a waste - they can use their new knowledge in other areas.
dogleash 5y ago
Que? Isn't "don’t see how it’s a market fit" just startup speak for "it's not economically viable"? That would fall squarely into the category of design failures I was talking about. It's not like we don't know any mechanism to cause condensation from air.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  It's not economically viable with their usual profit margin, on a market large enough to pay for their fixed costs, with the suppliers and labor they have around, and a lot of other constraints. That doesn't mean it's useless for everybody. So they publishing it may improve somebody's life.
- rat9988 5y ago
  Lowering cost by manufacturing at scale is knowledge they don't have, and they do need to make it financially viable. Other people might have it and make it viable.

icegreentea2 5y ago

Here's their summary blog post: https://x.company/blog/posts/sharing-project-h2e-with-the-world/ https://x.company/blog/posts/sharing-project-h2e-with-the-wo... Allow me to snip a few quotes: "After three years of work, the team felt confident they could build a device that would produce water for $.10 per liter; however, it would have taken significant development work and iteration to prove feasibility at $.01 per liter. Additionally, the next phase of work for the project looked to be heavily focused on hardware integration and mass production expertise — not X’s sweet spot." And: "Given these factors, it became clear that X wasn’t best suited to take the work forward, and one of the best ways X could have an impact now on the problem of access to safe drinking water was to share what we’ve learned." I have no idea what the prior state of the art of modelling viable areas for harvesting was (I presume this is probably where X made the largest contribution). As the blogpost identifies... X is not really the best group to tinker with large scale, low cost manufacturing prototyping and scale up.

dekhn 5y ago
this is just standard boilerplate at X which really means "the team and/or the executive sponsoring the project got bored and/or realized things required more professional work, and/or the idea wasn't really that great in the first place and the exterior world realized that"

usrusr 5y ago

The ad market for targeting the water deprived turned out to be smaller than expected?

photochemsyn 5y ago

I read their "Patent Non-Assertion Pledge", it's hard to interpret - they seem to retain lots of rights, as far as I can tell, it's not really 'giving it away for free'. Anyone wanting to develop this as a commercial product would probably have to call a lawyer first.

czbond 5y ago
https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/H2E%20Patent%20Non-Assertion%20Pledge.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/H2E%... They won't sue you for using the findings or design, but they still have U.S. Patent on it and our pledging that Google will not sue those who use this intellectual property nor will anyone they transfer the patent to be able to sue. What they call "infringement" just means that since they hold a patent others "copying" it would technically be infringing the patent - but they pledge not to sue.

jker 5y ago

Possibly they've already derived all the PR value from it they can, and further development of it wouldn't be a good ROI for them. Cynical take, to be sure, but also the most realistic one.

extrapickles 5y ago

They likely had trouble making it cheap and durable enough for the target market. Looking at the design files, the unit is quite fragile, thanks to the cheap vacuum formed plastic. What needs to be done is using some of the GIS tools they released to find good locations for air->water setups, is figure out what materials and manufacturing techniques are available in those locations. This way you are more likely to design something that makes a difference. Anything built with materials or techniques that are not local will break, and they will be unable to repair because they do not have access to either the materials or the tools needed to do repairs.

pdevr 5y ago

There may be multiple reasons for this, some of which may be those you stated, but couldn't altruism be at least an important part of the reason they shared this?

toothpicked 5y ago

They don't opensource modern Google Search and it is also flawed...

carabiner 5y ago

It just looks like a proof of concept. They tested it in very controlled conditions. Did not see how it withstands being knocked over, dropped, covered in dust from storms. Their market is Africa. How many of the towns have road access? Will the product be damaged in transport on very rough roads? Can they be stacked in transport, and how many high (or will they be crushed)? Will adhesives fail after n temperature cycles in the blazing sun + nighttime cold? Can it be repaired by people living there? Almost every part looks to be made from scratch. The only thing off the shelf is the pink insulation foam. Can any of this be sourced in the target markets?