> The Nissan Leaf, with a 68% smaller battery than a Tesla
Dude, that figure is kinda bogus. You can't just cite a random number like that. The first Leafs had a 20 Kw battery which is pretty close to your figure compared to a base 60 KWh Tesla Model S. But that was only the very first years, they went up to 24 KWh then 30 KWh and the current Leaf is 40 KWh.
They're still smaller than the base Tesla battery, but they are also cheaper. THey've always been way, way cheaper than a Model S or Model X, and the current Leaf is still cheaper than the Model 3 (and you can actually buy one now.)
> Lots of stuff about the Leaf and Bolt not being profitable.
Companies like to make a lot of hay about how much money they are losing on the stuff they are selling to seem like they're doing us a favor by selling it to us. This is always at least a little misleading. For example, they will roll in the cost of the R&D and building factories and updating their tooling and supply chain and say "Well we are losing money on Bolts this year" because of all those costs.
But those costs are investments. It's not like they are costs that go into every Bolt they make. It's an investment they have to make up front and they get to make this kind of spurious claim they're "losing money" because of it. They aren't any more than the "lose money" whenever they update a model of car.
Technically whenever they update a regular model the "lose money" on some number of them due to the costs of updates to the manufacturing and tooling and supply chain. But you don't hear anything about it because everybody knows it's a stupid way to look at it.
We should pay no more attention to these claims as they ramp up to make EVs.
Again I say; EVs are here, you can buy them, they are great, stop listening to B.S. And most importantly, stop repeating it!