okay, well, a microwave oven at Wal-Mart is $30 retail. there is nothing in any vaporizer in existence that is as complex as a microwave. so price of a vaporizer is completely arbitrary above, say, $25. Factors might be how much you want to pay the slaves.
custom glassworks could justify a higher price, but that's not the herbie's market. And in general, a Cloud-like bong would terrify the herbie market.
The main advantage i see (and experience) with accurate, consistent, digital temperature control is the no-brainer aspect of use. There is NO learning curve. This solves the problem of peeps who can't roll a decent joint and don't want to buy a pipe.
Being able to hit a specific temperature is a side effect of good design -- so go ahead and trumpet it in the marketing literature.
With a new product -- that tries to open up sales to a new demographic -- the maker can either educate the user or put the smarts in the product. Sometimes you have no choice -- for example, at one time, IBM was the largest publisher -- cranking out all the computer manuals. In the case of a vaporizer, smarts can be added to the product.
But i don't see how the herbie is different from the ViVape. Unless they are doing sublimation with all that power.