I wonder if the car manufacturer wants them for show rooms?
I could imagine a surface hub could make a very fancy virtual catalogue for going through the manufacturers full range of models, trim levels and options for instance. Maybe something a higher-end brand would be interested in (after all such dealerships often abound with fancy furniture for customers)?
Most USA car manufacturers don't have showrooms. There's only Tesla (AFAIK), and they've had issues with various state laws to prevent that sort of ownership.
The dealers are all independent, and they might want to purchase something like this. They have been moving away from paper catalogs...
But you could do this much cheaper with a cheap Windows or ChromeOS device connected to a touch display. Paying $8000+ would be completely unreasonable.
Because the Surface Hub is an integrated device, there are savings in:
* purchase research - deciding what parts to buy and making sure they'll all work out of the box and that the computer is fast enough to support what people will be doing with it
* physical setup - hooking up those external PCs and peripherals and making sure they are all working like an appliance so that you don't need an IT person "turn it on" for the salesperson before every meeting, etc.
* support - if something goes wrong, you're talking to Microsoft, without figuring out which part is broken and then figuring out who to call
Considering a decent 1080p 55" touch display is probably going to run you around $3K (and it doesn't have active pen support), I'm not sure $9K is that unreasonable for a business, especially if it stays in operation for five years or more.
-- edit: i realized the parent was responding to the to car showrooms comment and not boardrooms after the fact - but left the post here for the context of boardrooms
They could also get cheap furniture but appear to splash out on fancy stuff. The feeling of wealth and technology is important to high-end car brands.
I suspect a fully-fledged surface will seem a lot more fluid and interesting than a PC with touch display. Think Android 2.3 vs latest iOS (or indeed vs iOS of the android 2.3 era).
I could imagine a surface hub could make a very fancy virtual catalogue for going through the manufacturers full range of models, trim levels and options for instance. Maybe something a higher-end brand would be interested in (after all such dealerships often abound with fancy furniture for customers)?