[ww520]

50K is too much. That's in the luxury brand segments where car companies spent decades to build up brand awareness to justify the price. Put it in the 20K to 30K range and they will make a killing.

May be their production capacity can't handle the high volume so they price it to throttle demand.

[bathat]

The problem is that batteries are expensive. High-end cars have high margins (it doesn't cost 2x as much to build a $50k car as it does to build a $25k car). When Toyota introduced the Prius, they added all sorts of (what were then) $30k car features. Why? Not because they wanted to make a luxury car, (a friend of mine remarked that if they just added leather seats he would buy one instead of an expensive Lexus) but because it costs next to nothing to add those convenience features. That way people compare the Prius to a $30k car and see only a $1000 hybrid premium instead of a $5000 premium. That's also why you don't see $15k hybrids: Taking all the "premium" features out don't make it cost any less.

The reason this is possible is that hybrids and EVs have the margins of much less expensive cars.

Edit: added a sentence

[ww520]

The problem with material cost based approach is that it ignores the value of the brand. Yes, it doesn't cost 2x as much to build a $50K car as a $25K car but the branding of the $50K cars took a lots of money and a long time to build up. People are willing to buy a $50K BMW instead of a $20K car not because of the material cost but because of the intangible brand. A Prius arguably does not have the branding of a $30K car. Toyota still sold tons of them, kudos to them. Similarly Tesla simply doesn't have the branding power of a $50K car now.