What I can tell as an engineer, is that the main issue boils down to the level of maturity for the technologies you mention in your writing. It's not enough to have publications demonstrating feasibility, as from labs to field applications it's a long way, where non-trivial work has to be invested in things to make them useful enough for any practical purpose. The weak chain-link is electronics tech, which has been developed to cover energy handling, sensor data acquisition, information processing, and electromagnetic field based communication, to name a few. Things change, and as Robotbeat's comment here¹ says, we may rely on silicon carbide based chips now, for information processing at least. You mention using sound for echolocation and communication on short range scale, but the main communication issue is on long scale. You mention wind power but, due to its mechanical nature, there is wear and tear involved that has to be also addressed as part of an engineering solution to confer it any practical value, and not much thought has been allotted to those kind of conditions. To sum it up, in regard to Venus ground activity, the technical means we still have at our disposal are currently still mediocre, unfortunately.
Fluidics has been used for years in industry however. Both in automation and for vector control on Jet engines and other areas with high temperatures. It isn't just speculation on paper and on a lab.
Wind technology is a mature technology however. I cannot see why other means of energy generation on Venus would have a head start.
All solutions will need to be adapted to the conditions on Venus.
As for communication range. You just need to reach something like an airship or balloons higher up. At higher altitudes you temperature and pressure is no longer an issue and you can use whatever technology works on Earth.
To clarify, I never meant to suggest that we could just drop a rover on Venus right now. I was simply trying to challenge the idea that a mechanical rover was the better idea. I see you mention Robotbeat which seems perhaps like a better solution. But I still cannot see why a fluidics solution would not be better than the mechanical solution proposed here. Yes, carbide based chips may be even better.
"Fluidics has been used for years in industry however. Both in automation and for vector control on Jet engines and other areas with high temperatures."
Here on Earth we assume that the areas with extreme conditions can be contained, and normal conditions can be taken for granted for everything else. Yes we have engineering involving high temperatures, we also have easy available heat sinks. That is totally different from Venus, where we'll have to assume that the entire system will quickly reach to the environment's high temperature, that there will be little to no practical means to significantly cool off the equipment, and that that will be the assumed normal functioning parameters in the long run. This is a challenge, because as I said, we have limited technology that does not rely on conditions comparable to those on Earth. Part of the challenge in "all solutions will need to be adapted to the conditions on Venus" is that there was little incentive for this to happen naturally on Earth and thus it now can benefit less from the "free" progress that otherwise happened in society at large. There aren't good off-the shelve solutions to be picked and used. These have to be yet expensively researched and developed.
"Wind technology is a mature technology however. I cannot see why other means of energy generation on Venus would have a head start."
The issue is not how well the technology works (even in Venus' ground conditions), my comment has been about the mechanical nature, i.e. a bit on a lower level. Anything with moving parts will be exposed to a high degree of wear and need for maintenance. From an engineering POV you normally want to either avoid that or compound the problem by designing maintenance.
"You just need to reach something like an airship or balloons higher up. At higher altitudes you temperature and pressure is no longer an issue and you can use whatever technology works on Earth."
Not getting into the technical means of production and reception of the sound in Venus' conditions, nor into the reason for choosing sound as means of communication, this calls for a chain of balloons placed close enough to be able to "hear" each other in order to relay information up to an altitude where normal EM communication can be used. That's something we have yet to develop here on Earth. It would be interesting to know how we'd ensure balloons positioning, considering the unavoidable winds and other interference from atmospheric activity.
Despite the reserved attitude conveyed in what I've written here, I'm actually all for Venus exploration, and I consider it the most important next-target in human evolution, as may be reflected in my previous comments, for example like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24594285
¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27175751