From seeing attitudes of friends doing hardware startups, no, the GP's 3) was accurate. Kickstarter is now a marketing and product/market fit evaluation tool.
A friend of mine is halfway through his Kickstarter now and he directly told me that he doesn't expect much more than breaking even on it - the whole point is a) marketing and b) greater chance to get new investors on board, because that's where the real money is.
And, while I'm not sure of that, I suspect it's their current investor who suggested that Kickstarter campaign.
It's just all-around suspicious when a product you'd expect to be able to get traditional funding, is listed on Kickstarter instead.