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[Richard230]

According to this article, Chrysler's Chairman and CEO, Sergio Marchionne, doesn't want people to buy their all-electric Fiat 500e because they loose a ton of money on each sale.  So why sell them and what is the point of making this statement?   

http://www.autoworldnews.com/articles/7535/20140523/fiat-chrysler-ceo-marchionne-tells-people-dont-purchase-fiat-500e.htm

[protomech]

Why sell them? CARB compliance vehicle.

Why make this statement? Who knows.

Fiat 500e MSRP is $32k. If Fiat's *marginal* cost to build a Fiat 500e is $46k, then they're doing something fucking wrong. It's a nice car but it's not that nice. It's very possible with a limited-run vehicle that the average cost including R&D and overhead is $46k per vehicle in small quantities, but that doesn't appear to be what he's saying.

I would be surprised if Nissan, GM, BMW, etc were losing marginal money on their EVs.

[Richard230]

When I first read the statement I thought Chrysler's CEO was just trying to increase the sales of the 500e by letting the world know what a great deal it was if you bought one.  But when the general TV, radio and newspaper press didn't pick up on the story (which you would think would have been leaked by Chrysler to the media), I started to think that maybe he was really griping about government regulations making Fiat sell the cars so cheap.  But if so, he didn't explain himself very well, nor did he say why they had to price the car so low if they were losing money on each sale (especially considering that the car qualifies for CA and likely federal rebates, which he also didn't bother mentioning).  The point of his rant just doesn't make a lot of sense to me, other than to point out how much it costs to manufacturer an EV.