Any quite modest ESC can be fitted with an H-bridge of big knobbly transistors to handle any required voltage and current. Pricing the parts tends to reveal why pre-made commercial units have high prices.

PIC chips natively run on 5 volts or less. Adding regulator circuitry to each one (a common practice in the early days of TTL chips incidentally) adds to the cost, complexity and size and increases the price to the customer. As simple as. You either pay the extra for devices that work the way you want, or use what is on the market.

Or go into production after designing your own. Many mighty trading empires have started by spotting a gap in the market. Sadly, the world is littered with the wreckage resulting from the gaps being smaller than perceived.

I forgot to mention that the current version of P96 has a Zener diode which restricts the maximum voltage to the PIC to 5.2v so you can safely use a 6v or even 7.2v receiver supply. I dare say that if you wanted to buy a P98 and a P99 then some "arrangement" could be agreed!

The problem with P98 was that the PIC won't safely handle more than 6.0v while the particular N- and P- channel MOSFETs we needed won't switch reliably at less than 5v – that's why we came up with the In-Line Regulator P99. With so many receivers these days which will run on anything between 3v and 9.6v it's not as easy as it used to be to make third-party electronics which suit 'all sizes'.

DM