[toomuchtodo]

You reach the scale to sell cheap cars by first selling expensive cars to people who can afford to buy expensive cars. Someone has to eat the margin that Tesla uses to expand its manufacturing capacity for batteries and vehicles, and for the deployment of the Supercharger network. Where else would the money come from?

[MrStonedOne]

If you want to bring more people in to EV, you don't make cheap cars, you make durable cars and let the second market handle the rest. Tesla's aren't durable cars because price for maintenance and repair factors into the equation, and tesla has ensured those costs are high.