The hardware required to prototype the Bilibot is a lot more expensive than to prototype one of these Romos, so I don't get what they need 6 times the funding of the Bilibot project for. $78 per Romo seems fine, but the overall goal seems a bit high.
This was my first thought as well. I built a similar robot in terms of physical design and motorized capabilities a couple years ago for ~$400. It wasn't controlled by a phone, which will admittedly adds some complexity, but I really can't see their overall hardware costs, including prototypes, getting into the 10's of thousands. Is the expectation here that this is also covering a living wage for the developers? It seems like they would be more successful with a lower funding request with the plan being to make a profit once the device hits market.
EDIT: It looks like they aren't even applying a solder mask to the board, which is a really cheap way to improve quality and reliability. For an extensible product that they want people hacking, I'd be spending the few dollars to help minimize short circuits. From my experience, everyone who has skimped and not gotten a solder mask applied to their board ends up regretting it down the line.
The hardware required to prototype the Bilibot is a lot more expensive than to prototype one of these Romos, so I don't get what they need 6 times the funding of the Bilibot project for. $78 per Romo seems fine, but the overall goal seems a bit high.