I don't know. Spare bodies seem like a good idea when ignoring the production bottleneck and my own RMAs. I am enjoying having three front ends for one hopper, a second body would be nice to have too. Just to store fresh chambers or indeed to take travelling for some peace of mind... Though a whole unit is better again. If I didn't already have 3 units I'd be quite happy to pick up a spare body, and I think its a good option for those that don't have surplus units to do so.
The lead time for getting anything HL has always been longer than they quote and longer than anyone would like. The pricing structure is interesting too. There is less assembly work with the body than the back end, they pick and place PCBs in house, print their own heaters and import tubes to hold it together. Making circuit boards and laser sintering metals isn't exactly cheap, but considering the size and their previous batch potential, 90 per Ti piece isn't that cheap, but it's pretty good value.
Sure it sucks that they can't produce the fantasy of thousands of units made per week, but it really doesn't suck nearly as much when you get to selfishly appreciate having a working one. If throughput is approaching a 50% increase from the last few months, that's solid but slow progress I'm happy about. I was recently quoted about a month til they get to either of my RMAs, which were processed in November last year. It'll be a 10-12 month ordeal in total before I see them again. I still look forward to getting them back, as still nothing compares. It's really not hard to endure some necessary bullshit, I actually have a use case for this device that nothing else can offer, not only am I waiting on HL, I'm waiting on every other portable manufacturer to deliver too. HL might not be miraculously fast, or even on time, but they're better and quicker than anything else happening. It's a shame the general consumer isn't savvy to the fact.
They don't need excuses, it's not hard to understand. Everyone else needs excuses as to why they can't produce something similar. The reasoning is the failure rate and complexity. Take it or leave it, there's only one applicable option