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The improvement in the monthly payment is achieved by stretching out the loan period to be greater than five years. How much greater than five years, they don't say. Seven years? Ten years? How much extra interest does one pay on such a loan?

As I've written elsewhere, they can't offer a real lease because they don't have the money to finance their customers, and no bank is willing to place a bet on the resale value of the car in three years (the end of typical lease periods). Tesla and Elon's guaranteed resale value is apparently not good enough for the bankers, leaving no choice but to offer more expensive financing options--real loans. For a variety of reasons, a loan is less risky for a bank than a lease.

[cma]

they don't do a lease because they would lose the tax incentives

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Not at all--the leasing company (a separate shell entity or a bank) takes the tax credit because they bought the car. This is how both of my electric vechicle leases have worked. The leasing company then passes on the savings in the form of lower lease rates.