Speaking here from New Zealand, where central heating/thermostats are basically unheard of, outside of offices and schools. Heatpumps are very common in homes, usually high-wall mounted ones like this:
We have the approx 12 year old variant of the above heatpump in our current house, and in our previous house paid to install a similar thing.
The hardware cost for one of those is $2900 NZD, plus another few for install, leading to a total cost of around $5000-6000 NZD ($3000 - $3700) USD approx. While that is still a fair chunk of change, it's less than a quarter of the cost of the $14,000 USD that Electric Air is launching with.
It's not ideal, you end up with a single climate controlled part of your house, and the rest relies on leaving the doors open. The fully ducted electric air system (which I assume lets you heat/cool individual rooms) would certainly be a lot nicer, but the massive price differential means that only the really super rich elite level houses would ever install one. The other 99% of the market is happy with the "good enough" solution of a wall-mounted heatpump.
One other thing - Water drainage from a heatpump in cooling mode is a common problem. Installers need to run pipes out through walls to drain away condensed water, and while they ideally can use gravity, sometimes install location means a water pump is required. We have one of those; some years ago the pump failed leading to a lot of soaked carpet in our living room. Hopefully electric air has a good reliable solution there!
Finally: When installing heatpumps, this requires the indoor unit (source of cold/hot air) to be connected via heatpipe to the outdoor unit. This almost always involves drilling holes through interior and exterior walls (often brick). Because of the potential for things to go wrong, I'd never recommend a DIY / home contractor to install such a thing. You want a reputable company that warranties their work, has something at stake, and that you can have recourse against, if they screw it up.
> Better air quality is achieved through a thermostat with PM2.5 and CO2 sensors, as well as an air quality module on the air handler that controls HEPA filtration, fresh air intake and modification of the home’s humidity
This is very nice, but in the grand scheme of things nobody cares about these. They just want a warm house in winter and a cool one in summer.
If air quality/filtering were a free/cheap addon that'd be great, but not if it means the unit costs significantly more.
OTOH, that gives you a very nice market segmentation mechanic. Provide a lower-cost unit without things like CO2 sensors and HEPA filters, and charge a fat margin to upgrade to the fancy one for those richer people who have the luxury of such things.
https://www.mitsubishi-electric.co.nz/heatpump/i/69337B/stan...
We have the approx 12 year old variant of the above heatpump in our current house, and in our previous house paid to install a similar thing.
The hardware cost for one of those is $2900 NZD, plus another few for install, leading to a total cost of around $5000-6000 NZD ($3000 - $3700) USD approx. While that is still a fair chunk of change, it's less than a quarter of the cost of the $14,000 USD that Electric Air is launching with.
It's not ideal, you end up with a single climate controlled part of your house, and the rest relies on leaving the doors open. The fully ducted electric air system (which I assume lets you heat/cool individual rooms) would certainly be a lot nicer, but the massive price differential means that only the really super rich elite level houses would ever install one. The other 99% of the market is happy with the "good enough" solution of a wall-mounted heatpump.
One other thing - Water drainage from a heatpump in cooling mode is a common problem. Installers need to run pipes out through walls to drain away condensed water, and while they ideally can use gravity, sometimes install location means a water pump is required. We have one of those; some years ago the pump failed leading to a lot of soaked carpet in our living room. Hopefully electric air has a good reliable solution there!
Finally: When installing heatpumps, this requires the indoor unit (source of cold/hot air) to be connected via heatpipe to the outdoor unit. This almost always involves drilling holes through interior and exterior walls (often brick). Because of the potential for things to go wrong, I'd never recommend a DIY / home contractor to install such a thing. You want a reputable company that warranties their work, has something at stake, and that you can have recourse against, if they screw it up.
Good luck!