Satisfy its crowd-funded pre-orders
On the left in the image above is Lockitron's original smart lock design. On the right is the new version. According to the company's announcement this morning, the latter is called the Bolt, and is the one that the company can actually produce in enough quantity to satisfy its crowd-funded pre-orders and eventually hit wide retail distribution.
The Bolt has some fairly significant changes compared with the long-delayed original product the company described in a self-directed crowd-funding campaign from 2012. The company says it made the changes to address the manufacturing difficulty that came from its original design, as well as to mitigate the original's reliability and battery-life issues. The new model no longer has a knock sensor. Wi-Fi now comes via an external unit called Bridge. Bolt also replaces your entire deadbolt, rather than fitting over an existing thumb turn.
If you're an existing backer of Lockitron whose order has not yet been fulfilled, your order will be changed, automatically to the Bolt plus the Bridge unit. Your place in line will also remain the same. If you've already received an original Lockitron, the company says it will offer you the opportunity to buy a Bolt for $49. New Bolt pre-orders will cost $99, down $80 from the original $179 price, but that doesn't include the Bridge unit, which gives the Bolt Wi-Fi. To add a Bridge, you'll need to kick down an additional $80.
A round of 1,000 beta Bolt units will ship in March, and the company says it expects to ship the full production models in late spring 2015. A FAQ on the Lockitron website outlines the reasoning behind the changes and argues for why you should believe the company can hit its new production dates in quantity.