For those of you who don't know, Dean Kamen does not aspire to make money via consumer hype. His field is physics, not engineering, and he applies physical science to find solutions for everyday challenges. He has already proven himself to be the real deal. I encourage his detractors to take a look at his inventions and read about his career.
I agree, Kamen is definitely a very talented inventor. I've read several articles by him and about him and I've seen a few TV spots on him as well. I do think that he realizes that there is a certain level of consumer hype necessary to sell even the best idea. There are thousands of great ideas everyday for new and improved products but most of them never get to market or don't sell because they are not marketed properly. Some of the articles mentioned $100 million of investment in the development - I'll bet a good chunk of this is for marketing and sales. I expect to see Kamen on lots of talk shows demo-ing this thing. There will of course be lots of print adds and internet marketing as well. I expect to see an Apple "iMac" magnitude sales and marketing campaign.
Regarding the $3K price point- I think they will initially sell a pile of them at this price before they need to lower it to catch the 2nd tier buyers. While I'm not too sure about it "changing the way cities are built", I think it may have its place. I do wonder how long it will take between the time of the first sale and the first lawsuit from injury (either real or imagined).