Australian Kickstarter campaign Exodrive halted after 10 months of project setbacks – refunds to be issued

Last we saw of Australian Kickstarter campaign for the microSD toting Exodrive case, the project was underway. The project missed the expected March shipping date, and now with December almost here, campaign manager Bhadrajee Dahanayake has advised his backers the campaign has been cancelled with a plan to refund backers.

There have been a number of setbacks in the process throughout the last 10 months, but it’s been an interesting ride with updates on the production of prototypes and initial models being sent through at regular intervals. The update cancelling the project came through in an email from Dahanayake yesterday, who advised that:

I’m sorry to say things are not going to plan, production of cases is just too slow to have them all sent within a reasonable time. The labor taken to make each case is much more than can be continued. Because of this I’ve come to the decision to cancel the project, and instead focus on refunding everyone.

With regards to the decision, he said that his ‘initial planning for this project was insufficient, leaving holes for many problems to arise’. The decision to refund is based on the production setbacks and he’s decided to concentrate on trying to refund backers than continue down the path of issues he’s been facing, and move on.

No dates have been given for when refunds will be given to backers, but Dahanayake has been pretty communicative throughout the process so we should hear something soon. Though there’s no guarantee that a refund will be offered, it’s good to see Dahanayake has addressed it and has the intention to provide them, though how much will be left of the initial campaign funds after 10 months of development is negligible.

The actual product was quite ambitious for a first attempt, with cases for up to ten different phones being developed simultaneously. The concept of a case which added memory to a phone via microSD card expansion was a singularly exciting prospect for a number of people. At the half way point, a change saw the option of a modified case adding extra battery capacity by using Galaxy S4 batteries added to the campaign. A concept I jumped on personally. In total at the conclusion of the campaign 441 backers pledged a total of $19,799 to help bring the project to life.

The Exodrive case had merit, and was a great concept and I’d love to see someone else attempt to pick up where he left off, perhaps a larger manufacturer with prototyping and tooling capabilities already in place.