Why is tech suddenly the in thing for new divers?
- Thread starter Mtbr
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So let's break this down:
95% of new divers- do you want to spend $300 on a cert and have the ability to rent gear anywhere for peanuts or buy cheap gear, and pay $5 for a "inefficient" air fill? Or do you want to buy a rebreather for $7000, training for $1000, have to pay for consumables on every dive (what are EAC's running these days? $30 a pop?), and have to deal with getting O2 fills in additional to your $5 air fill on your rebreather? Oh, and you will be hard pressed to find a rental unit anywhere for the only thing you are certified to dive. What am I missing here? In return you get a couple more minutes of NDL.
5% of new divers that will become "divers"- Same situation as above, but if they ever choose to do any serious diving that actually warrants CCR diving, their recreational unit will be useless and they will have to fork out the cash for a serious machine all over again, then get trainined, etc. etc. etc.
Technical divers- will laugh in the face of a "bulletproof, so easy a cavediver could do it, reliable" unit because that almost always means that you are taking control out of the divers hands and placing it in the machine's. Anyone willing to place themselves in a deep or distant environment on a breather wants absolute control on the unit, not a turnkey rebreather that's easy to run within the parameters that the machine has set.
I don't think the economics, or more importantly the hassle, of a recreational rebreather will ever make sense. The new Poseidon will be a niche player. Look at the Draeger dolphin/ ray. For a recreational diver that unit provides almost all of the benefits of a closed unit and it never really caught on in large numbers. Don't mean to burst your visionary bubble, but the realities of a mainstream recreational rebreather will never hold up against the wants/needs/constraints of the typical recreational diver.
John_B
Grasshopper
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Ryan is right. The Draeger Dolphin was reasonably affordable, had a shallow learning curve with few failure modes that could sneak up on you and kill you, yet offerred a great deal of capability and many of the advantages of CCR's.
As an aside, the Dolphin also had growth potential with many being modified for specific applications or even converted to CCR operation. In fact, I still have it on my list of possible future projects as, properly modified, it is very well suited to cave diving at recreational depths to 130' and is a good way to gain rebreather experience before going to a CCR.
All that said, the Dolphin never caught on as when you got right down to it, the savings from the smaller quantity of nitrox you used in a day was not enough to offset the cost of the the sorb you also used in a day and, as simple as it was it was still a lot more complex and time consuming maintence wise than OC. So in the end there was no real advantage for the average recreational diver, just more cost and more set up and maintenence time invested per diving day.
Now the new Poseiden has potential in that it checks itself out and gives you a go/no go idiot light and cleans up in a dishwasher. But it will, like a Dolphin, still be more expensive to operate and will require more maintenence. A lot more, if you consider the average rec diver is doing better than average if they properly rinse their regs. So again I do not see mcuh of a role for it other than perhaps as a good first rebreather before moving on to a CCR.
As an aside, the Dolphin also had growth potential with many being modified for specific applications or even converted to CCR operation. In fact, I still have it on my list of possible future projects as, properly modified, it is very well suited to cave diving at recreational depths to 130' and is a good way to gain rebreather experience before going to a CCR.
All that said, the Dolphin never caught on as when you got right down to it, the savings from the smaller quantity of nitrox you used in a day was not enough to offset the cost of the the sorb you also used in a day and, as simple as it was it was still a lot more complex and time consuming maintence wise than OC. So in the end there was no real advantage for the average recreational diver, just more cost and more set up and maintenence time invested per diving day.
Now the new Poseiden has potential in that it checks itself out and gives you a go/no go idiot light and cleans up in a dishwasher. But it will, like a Dolphin, still be more expensive to operate and will require more maintenence. A lot more, if you consider the average rec diver is doing better than average if they properly rinse their regs. So again I do not see mcuh of a role for it other than perhaps as a good first rebreather before moving on to a CCR.
Having been in marketing and advertising for 20yrs, I'll simply say that many of the greatest marketing blunders I've ever seen were related to someone observing "current absence of a product" in the marketplace and mistaking that for "future demand for a product."
Availability of a product does not generate demand for it. Demand for a product is generated by the target audience's perception that the product solves a problem they actually have.
As Theodore Levitt - the "Godfather of Marketing" at Harvard Business School - once said: "People don't buy 1/4" drill bits, they buy 1/4" holes!" If I don't need "a hole" I don't need your "drill bit" and it doesn't matter how much your drill bit costs, what it's made out of, how shiny it is, how easy it is to use, how much better it is than the competition's drill bit, etc.
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It is also a FACT that rebreathers are far more likely to cause the death of the diver, than the open circuit alternative. A great deal of extra training and preparation is "supposed to" mitigate this increased risk....
Shallow water diving does not help reduce much of the risk with rebreather diving ( this being one way OC risk is reduced with poorly trained new divers)....
In a market ( new divers) where the masses have almost enough training and skills to survive unsupervised for an hour in a swimming pool, maybe, any company planning to aim a rebreather at them should have a name for these units , like the " Kevorkian Rebreather", or " the Euthanizer"...
Dan
The only thing that has LESS influence on demand for a product than its mere "availability" is the fact that the manufacturer has a "goal" of selling it.
Inefficient is in terms of gas use? Sure. Inefficient in facilitating recreational dive profiles? No. Inefficient in terms of cost vs. the closed-circuit alternative? Not even close!!!!
For recreational air/nitrox diving, the rebreather will never be a more cost or TIME efficient solution. There will always be consumables whose costs will outweigh the benefit of gas efficiency with that crowd. There will always be more maintenance that most people aren't ready to do. And as I mentioned in my previous posts, until all LDS's start charging by the cf, you are paying for an air fill either way. And you have to buy the unit which is substantially more expensive than the comparable start-up costs for OC.
rexlyn
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oops!
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