I just spent 1000.00 last week. (OK, actually it was over 900 but less than 1000 - I just rounded off). I'll be doing it again before the years out. I do know commercial growers growing thousands of autos from seed. The practice is being given increasing consideration all the time. I think Phil is genius for concentrating entirely on breeding autfolowers at mephistogentics.com. That's how people make a fortune. Seeing the future others can't and making it happen.
Actually, really well bred autoflowers will outproduce photos given the same space and the same light and the same number of weeks. You already hit on why earlier but it didn't sink in, apparently. You can run the lights, which power the plant up to TWO TIMES LONGER DURING THE SAME PERIOD OF TIME. Now you might think, OH FUCK, that's just going to double my electricity during flower.
YEP. It does. But it gives you a bigger yield and a smart commercial grower knows that it's all about the net. If you can net more after all electricity costs by running a 24 hour light in your space, you're ahead. It's all about your business strategy.
The genetics..... I'll tell you right now that you can randomly pick any strain on the Mephisto genetics website, grow out an auto and send it in for testing and it'll probably be more potent than your favorite commercial strain. And not by a small margin, either. You owe it to yourself to try it to see if what you think you know is still correct.
Cannabis breeding has come a long way and you haven't seen shit yet. Once cannabis is legal worldwide and the technology of companies like Monsanto get unleashed on it (I know, "monsanto is evil", but let's not get into that nonsense with this thread). The autoflower gene is just one gene and with gene splicing, any strain can become autoflowering without altering any of the other characteristics like we must through more standard genetic modification programs.
I don't really care if people hate on autoflowers. I don't really like all the misinformation getting bandied about, though. And I realize from your perspective, everything I just posted might be all that (whoever you are). But you can check it out for yourself if you care more about what's right than who's right.
( mephistogenetics.com <--- wouldn't cost you much to find out).