The original ZeroHour was kind of huge, bigger than a Skyray King. A 1x18650 light sounds much easier to carry, and the built-in charging function should make it appeal more to muggles.
The competition is pretty steep at that price range and battery type though… For example the Zebralight SC62 / SC600, which are both very nice. It would take something pretty amazing to beat those.
Alternately, the Convoy S-series of lights are pretty nice, only a fraction of the price, and are nicely moddable so they can be converted from “nice” to “awesome”. Great stock selection, and easy to mod in a wide variety of ways. Standard easily-flashable driver hardware too.
I suppose it depends on what type of uses you’re aiming for though… The above are all EDC-style, fairly easy to carry and useful for general purposes. But throwers can be nice too.
Two throwy budget lights which are particularly good for their class are the XinTD C8 and the Jacob A60. But up in the ZeroHour’s price range you’ve got items like the Nitecore CU6, featuring nice white and UV outputs plus basic r/g/b emitters, or the SRT7 which trades the UV for better white output and a smoothly-variable control ring.
I guess my questions are… What kind of market are you aiming for? And what will distinguish the ZeroHour 1x18650 light from established premium lights like the ZL SC62w or the NiteCore SRT7?
Charging from USB is an interesting feature, but isn’t particularly special. For some (like me), it’s actually a downside since I’d rather have a smaller light instead of carrying charging hardware with me. A decent charger is only about $5, and it’s hard to go through an entire 18650 cell in a day.
Things which would make it interesting to me are: Small body, made from bare titanium or copper or brass or maybe steel, high-CRI daylight tint emitter (for example, the Nichia 219B 92CRI 4500-5000K, or the awesome Cree MT-G2 5000K), very high and very low modes with a good selection between (like, 0.2 to 2000 lumens), either fast PWM (10+kHz) or constant-current output, nice interface (probably an e-switch with a relatively deep set of functions), a battery check mode, flashy bike headlight modes, high efficiency, smooth floody beam for up-close use (perhaps a frosted lens available as a choice), moddable, … I could go on for quite a while (I think I already have).
For some really interesting ideas, talk to tterev3.