Wave 2 & 3 Update: Wave 2 Complete, Wave 3 Starts Later
The last remaining Wave 2 preorders have shipped. Wave 3 is pushed back: there will be no order emails in October, and orders are expected to start around late November or early December while the production process is reworked. New US orders are very unlikely in 2026, and the Wave 3 price is 179 EUR.
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Wave 2
A few days ago, the last remaining Wave 2 preorders finally shipped.
Hopefully everyone who has received their kit is having fun with it and everything is working as expected. It took a lot longer than originally planned, so it is a real relief to finally have all of these orders out.
Over the next week, work will also start on the remaining open replacement part and hardware tickets. Things are moving forward for the US customers waiting for replacement parts as well, although unfortunately it will still take some more time to get everything set up.
Wave 3
The plans for Wave 3 have changed slightly. There will be no order emails in October, and realistically, Wave 3 orders are not expected to start until around late November or early December.
The main reason is simply that some time is needed to properly rework and improve the processes. At the moment, a lot of things are still very manual. For example, all boards are flashed individually by hand, and every part goes through quite a time-consuming testing process.
That worked fine for the smaller batches, but with the increasing number of kits planned for the next year, this is simply no longer a sensible way to do things. Rather than continuing like this and slowly making everything more difficult, it makes much more sense to take the extra month now and properly improve the whole process.
The goal is that once Wave 3 starts, kits can be produced and shipped much faster and more efficiently than right now. It should mean a bit more waiting in the short term, but hopefully much less waiting later on.
There is one small exception. Over the next few weeks, around 20 to 30 kits will ship within Germany using the latest hardware revision. These will basically serve as a larger real-world test before hundreds of kits are produced with this revision.
A few days will probably also be lost to GTA 6 when it comes out.
US Orders
On July 24, the temporary 10% global surcharge under Section 122 expired. In simple terms, this means that importing a kit into the US would now make each kit roughly 37.5% more expensive overall. That would put the final price at around 320 USD, which is more than feels comfortable to charge.
A workaround using a US fulfillment provider is currently being worked on, basically the same way larger companies handle this. Unfortunately, this requires quite a bit more planning and also involves some import and tax-related things that there has not been time to properly figure out yet. If you happen to work for a US fulfillment provider or know someone who could help with this, feel free to send a DM. The chance is probably one in a million, but you never know.
Because of this, it is unfortunately very likely that there will be no new US orders in 2026. The aim is to find a workable solution for early 2027.
Price
As expected, Wave 3 will be a little more expensive. The price will increase by 14 EUR, from the original 165 EUR to 179 EUR.
There are a few costs that were not properly accounted for when the price was originally calculated, including things like insurance, laboratory testing and a number of other small, sometimes odd expenses.
However, assuming there are no major supply chain issues and no sudden massive price increases for things like cameras, LEDs or ESP32s, this should be the final price going forward for future orders.
More updates will follow as soon as there is news.