How much is that blue in the window?

Yesterday, I referenced a $150 per square foot figure as the base cost of the "old" SPD. Today I'll fill in the blanks.

The source in question is a licensee called SPD Technologies. This licensee, formerly named Razor's Edge Technologies, is not to be confused with the old name of a division of L-3 Communications. (Which, needless to say, some message board super-sleuths initially did.)

Now the current version of the website does not show any prices, for the very good reason that they have no products to sell, but the friend of all Internet historians, the Wayback Machine, never forgets...

Here we have the most simple form of SPD product, an "SPD shade". The picture appears to be gone, but it is basically a naked sheet of SPD film with as little wiring as is necessary to make it functional. At any rate, that is not so much important as are the price quotes at the bottom. Over $1,000 for a 24"x24" piece of SPD film! Admittedly, that includes the overhead for the wiring and minimal frame, so let's compare prices among the different sizes.

The 36"x36" weighs in at $1789.08 (do they not believe in rounding off prices in Delaware?), or $734.36 more than the 24"x24". So, for an additional five square feet of SPD film, you pay $146.87 per square foot. The additional two square feet of the 24"x36" cost (vs. the 24"x24") cost $304.48, or $152.24 per square foot. So, on aggregate, the upcharge for an additional square foot of SPD film is on the order of $150 per square foot.

Now, why is this significant? Well, for one thing, our friendly REFR board member Dr. Malvino claims on his website that the production cost of SPD film should in fact be between $1 and $4 per square foot, while the generic "EC" film would cost a whopping $25 to $40 per square foot to produce. If the real cost of SPD film is over $100 per square foot, that rather makes a difference I think!

Even more damning is a 2001 trade show report by none other than our friend Michael LaPointe. Among much other material that is quite amusing in retrospect is a comment that their (unnamed) licensee's "projected price point" for SPD windows was supposed to be "$15-$30 per square foot".

Well, gee, only off by a factor of 10. Guess it's only appropriate that REFR stock is down by a similar amount from its highs of that year.

On that note, have a great Memorial Day weekend, but never forget why we observe it.