“To be fair, every automaker’s low MPG cars subsidize the sale of their hybrids”
I’m not the brightest guy around. Are you saying that the hybrids can’t be sold for a decent profit, but that the hybrids are needed to bolster a given manufacturer’s fleet fuel efficiency value.
Hybrids would cost several thousand dollars more to the consumer for automakers to make a similar profit.
It’s basically comes down to CAFE requirements for MPG and pollution. The EPA allows car companies to sell more polluting, inefficient, vehicles as long as the overall fleet meets a certain minimum standard.
Some automakers meet the increasing MPG by using substitutes to MPG (which the EPA allows). Such substitutes can be $3,000-$5,000 to Tesla for its sale of a fully electric car, subsidize its own manufacture of a hybrid or electric car, or modify your cars to use 85% ethanol (which the EPA counts as positive credit toward corporate CAFE requirements—it might be that a car capable of using 85% ethanol is considered to have 5 MPG better than it really has).