They didn't make them in large enough numbers to make an acceptable return, they were essentially hand made vehicles that Gm lost money making. The only reason they made them is because California law required them to make them. They made exactly as many as the law required and then quit.
> > If the company is making an acceptable return on the vehicle, please > explain why they are *deliberately* restricting supply (as opposed to, > say, just making the wrong guess as to demand, or restricting their > level of risk, or keeping the maintenance network manageable, or any > of a hundred other economically reasonable things)? The auto makers' > primary goal is to make money and show a good return for the > investor. Their repeated decisions to cancel EV production is almost > certainly motivated by that very goal, and this point of view is > backed by the auto makers' own utterances. Therefore, if you are > asserting that the supply of the Prius (or any of the EVs offered for > sale or lease) was restricted for something other than a perfectly > good economic reason, the burden is on you to prove the point. > > Long lines to purchase a product do not necessarily say much about the > profitability of a product. Long lines do prove that there is a > demand for the product as offered, but if the costs of R&D plus > marketing plus manufacture plus maintenance etc., etc., outweigh the > price charged, or simply produce an inadequate ROI, then the product > is still not viable. The long lines may well be a public recognition > that this is an exceptionally good bargain, and unlikely to be > sustainable. (I'm not saying long lines prove that a product is > unprofitable - far from it - I'm simply saying that they don't prove > it *is* profitable, either. At best, long lines prove that there is > potential in the marketplace.) So, unless you have a credible > alternative explanation for why the supply is restricted, I feel > pretty comfortable using those numbers as evidence of low demand for a > viable product of this type. (DaVinci, of course, is a pure red > herring.) -snip- GM has already paid the R&D costs, so stopping now certainly won't recover them. At any rate, economically speaking, the R&D costs are now irrelevant. All that counts is whether or not they can build them for less than they can sell them. Hand built it's questionable, build in proper production lines with economy of scale working for them they could almost certainly turn a proffit. > > EVs, on the other hand, have very high R&D costs associated with them > - much higher than any ICE vehicle,
