[woodruffw]

Not to press this point too hard, but "no more than $3,000 per can" is still ridiculous. They're $175 apiece here[1].

I can understand spending $20,000 (or even $60,000) on the pilot designs. But TFA makes it sound like the city was billed $20,000 just to fabricate it.

Edit: Updated the link to a better article.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-04/new-york-...

[inferiorhuman]

The VOA article seems to me to imply that the whole development cost was $20,000.

  It is proving to be a costly project. One of the trash cans under consideration
  cost more than $20,000 and took four years to make.