> The losses go far beyond the cost of building and selling those 10,000 cars, according to Ford. Instead the losses include hundreds of millions being spent on research and development of the next generation of EVs for Ford. Those investments are years away from paying off.
At the dealership, it takes a lot to qualify a new-car buyer.
And then convince the buyer that your company's car is the one for them.
After that if the buyer can be carried all the way to the finish line, ready to sign on the dotted line, that's another huge milestone.
At this point the dealers should naturally be high-fiving, but when you do the math it would have been potentially better to just reward those enthusiastic buyers with thousands of dollars cash not to buy.
Unironically yes if they commit to volume. 10k isn't that many and certainly not enough to recoup big R&D expenses over. Ford sold 4.4M cars apparently.
Premature amortization ?