The thing that occurs to me . . .
1. There are essentially no options on these cars, and so no markup to be made on things like AWD, moon roofs, roof rackets, 3rd row seating, leather seats, etc.
2. From what I've heard, there is a very slim profit margin on these cars.
3. Factory invoice is probably not much lower than the dealer's so-called invoice cost, but let's assume it is still a few K dollars under.
4. Unless the dealership is small, there must be essentially no flooring cost on the RAV4 EV because dealers are not advertising them at all.
5. I think to be an authorized RAV4 EV dealer in CA, those dealers had to shell out for service tech training and special shop tools, and maybe a Leviton charging station or two as well.
Conclusion: At current extremely attractive incentive pricing, both Toyota and the Dealers are probably losing money on all these cars, unless the true factory invoice is at least $6000 less than MSRP, not counting shipping which is passed on the buyers. Neither are the dealer and Toyota making even a few thousand bucks off of the financing, because at 0%APR, there is no finance charge to speak of!
Maybe, this is why the dealers are treating these so-called "compliance" cars like they are something they need not waste any time really trying to sell. They are just sharing the burden with Toyota to loss money on every care sold, and for this reason, they would prefer to lease them or put them into rental car service which has already happened with respect to the latter - and it seems very unusual to have purely BEV cars available as rentals at that!
