A large part of the cost is in brackets/adaptors.
For instance, the PD ASC Pro MSRP has nearly 40% tied up in the brackets.
In the case of PD, those parts are forged, which means the unit cost is low, but the tooling has to be amortised. The quantity the mould costs can be amortised over is limited by the throughput of the carbon moulds.
You also need to amortise the carbon moulds, testing, samples etc.
If you look at a small aftermarket company, often they are CNCing the alloy parts, which means the upfront cost is low, but the unit cost stays high. It also allows the ability to iterate quickly and produce adaptors for different bars. Their carbon parts will also be from small batches, which increases the cost of producing those.
However, most small companies are selling direct so they can achieve a high margin.
The idea of a standardised basebar mount pattern is therefore not all that useful. A standardised riser and bracket mount is what you really need to bring the cost down without compromising safety.
And safety is a big problem. A lot of these aftermarket parts exceed the design parameters of the basebars. The D2Z that Nick shared a pic of is longer than most basebars are tested for. Even if a company has done testing of their parts, if the whole system hasn’t been tested there is a high risk of breaking the basebar with the current extended systems.
Someone commented about Culprit taking ages - I happen to know he is spending the time on making sure his products are safe. Which is time consuming and I don’t think it is happening to an acceptable level with some brands.
Before I rant about semantics I’ll point out that I consult to PD but am not an official representative of the company and my views are my own.
I think we need to be careful of terminology. Super implies some things. And we ran into this problem with bikes. Superbikes was a term coined to cover bikes with specific bars. But the inference was then that the bikes were superior. Which was not (and still isn’t) the case.
As mentioned in the article - the Shiv Tri was hampered by the bars. As is the current Speed Concept. Those bikes (and many others) are not faster for being designed as a complete system.
Similarly, using super-bars to refer to an arm hugging extension implies superior performance. Which is not the case in many instances.
That does come back to the brackets/risers in large part, the clunky adaptors and flat mounting surfaces are not great for airflow.
Reasons for the performance decrement aside. The number one focus for aerobars needs to be adjustability to get the rider into their best position. If you can then find a full-arm extension that allows the same position and doesn’t have a messy interface, then maybe you have a super-bar.
/rant
As an example of the above, I fitted a rider this week using frontal area measurement as a first step optimisation. Once we had dialled in his best position I added the ASC Pro. At first, the difference in cup shape meant I got the pad width wrong, which immediately showed up in the FA measurement. A bit of adjustment got the same FA. So his position wasn’t compromised by the full-arm bar and they will give an aero improvement on the road. Plus he is stoked about his bike looking cool 
