@grawdaddy I’m not at liberty to discuss specifics right now, but let’s just say that the break-even for the Raptor is much, much lower than you imagine above (10,000 per year). I had a chance to nab a peek at some numbers that I wasn’t supposed to see… long story short, the R&D costs as well as those associated with production variance are not even remotely high. In fact, the “toughest” part of putting a variant like the Raptor into production is sourcing the components and determining/finalizing logistics with suppliers.
That’s why it makes so much sense for a truck like this — and other inexpensive variants of existing models — to be put into production. The costs are insignificant, the margins are slightly higher than average (per unit of output), and the added image benefits drawn from said variant’s exsitence are huge, albeit mostly intangible.
