Considering the 500 miles of wheel time to date, this isn't an expert talking, but....
After about 600 dragstrip launches and passes on a manual trans, engaging the clutch unloaded or lightly loaded is going to reduce the amount of heat generated, lessen the chance of hot spots on the flywheel and reduce slippage associated with wear. After trying several different shift scenarios, my car seems lo like a slight lift at the gearchange. I would very much prefer a shortened engagement window and will be getting the DBW box once everything else is sorted out on this car.
As for the price...
This is a low volume exotic. That there is a company producing an aftermarket mod box at all is a wonder! Other chip solutions for other vehicles either are shared platform solutions - or - there's enough volume to defray the initial development cost. Re-chipping a stock Bentley ECU with a new stock chip is $650.00 - no development cost there. It's not an accurate comparative to look at a mass production programming modification and compare it to a vehicle which, until just recently, was shipping an average of 5,000 vehicles a year worldwide. During the same timeframe (2004-ish) GM was moving 35,000 Corvettes a year, and Ford moved over 140,000 Mustangs. On a volume production line, Maserati production (until 2014) could be knocked out in a couple of weeks with a two shift operation; a month on a single shift line.
Let's just say it took $100K to develop the DBW module in engineering, programming and testing. The market is small - let's say 500 units total. Amortization of development cost is in this example is $200 a unit. FD had no idea how many they'd sell; they took on risk in development. Meanwhile, the market is 28 times bigger for a Mustang module, so amortization per unit drops to a little over seven bucks. The numbers are for illustrative purposes only, I have no idea what actual development costs were, but it wouldn't surprise me if a few eggs were broken in the process of arriving at a marketable improvement which didn't eat clutches or throw codes.
And finally - if FD was making a killing on DBW modules, then there would be competition. Would it be nice if the module were cheaper? Yes, but the business case (based on amortization and volume) most likely does not support it. If it did, you'd see other entries.
