> Aren't they just buying the same components made in Taiwan/China/wherever from a U.S. distributor such as Digikey and then saying 'Made in U.S.A.' in the same way other manufacturers do?
Considering how fuzzy their language has been on the subject + the fact that they never cleared it despite many people asking for clarification + their track record on "embellishing" reality, we can rather safely assume that what they call 'Electronics' is in fact a dumb PCB, and that most of the components are the same as on the regular version.
In fact, I am even highly suspicious when this post talks about "in-house", "our facility". They have basically never manufactured anything so far, they are not a hardware maker (not even designers, this is outsourced too), there is no sign that they have qualified personal for such operation, the facility they have been talking so far was in fact a warehouse with a bit of final assembly and a bit of warranty service (just last month they said they had no personal there qualified to even simply check or fix the laptops motherboard they get from China), and they have zero cash. This is not consistent with suddenly buying PCB making and assembly line tooling and operating it for a single small series of product. The only possibility is if they got some government contract or something like that.
With this company, you should never forget that the boss is a bullshit artist, and that you should take anything he says with a large grain of salt. It doesn't mean that their projects are complete vaporware, or that they never deliver, but there is great difference between what they claim, what they promise, what they drive people to believe on one side, and what they actually do and achieve on the other side. He says what people want to hear, and it doesn't matter much whether it reflects reality or not. For example, in late 2019 he said that they would produce 50,000 Librem 5 before the end of Q1 2020. Well, as of the end of Q2 2021, they will have produced less than 2,000 unit (IIRC). And of course just a few months before, they completely faked the release in September 2019.
Considering how fuzzy their language has been on the subject + the fact that they never cleared it despite many people asking for clarification + their track record on "embellishing" reality, we can rather safely assume that what they call 'Electronics' is in fact a dumb PCB, and that most of the components are the same as on the regular version.
In fact, I am even highly suspicious when this post talks about "in-house", "our facility". They have basically never manufactured anything so far, they are not a hardware maker (not even designers, this is outsourced too), there is no sign that they have qualified personal for such operation, the facility they have been talking so far was in fact a warehouse with a bit of final assembly and a bit of warranty service (just last month they said they had no personal there qualified to even simply check or fix the laptops motherboard they get from China), and they have zero cash. This is not consistent with suddenly buying PCB making and assembly line tooling and operating it for a single small series of product. The only possibility is if they got some government contract or something like that.
With this company, you should never forget that the boss is a bullshit artist, and that you should take anything he says with a large grain of salt. It doesn't mean that their projects are complete vaporware, or that they never deliver, but there is great difference between what they claim, what they promise, what they drive people to believe on one side, and what they actually do and achieve on the other side. He says what people want to hear, and it doesn't matter much whether it reflects reality or not. For example, in late 2019 he said that they would produce 50,000 Librem 5 before the end of Q1 2020. Well, as of the end of Q2 2021, they will have produced less than 2,000 unit (IIRC). And of course just a few months before, they completely faked the release in September 2019.