The main impediment for this approach is still the battery pack. Unless you can reduce the cost/kwh of batteries the corolla of the ev world won't happen. Battery costs per Kwh are on a downward trend. Tesla is probably around 100-110$ per KWh translating to about 7-8K for it's flagship 70 KWh battery pack.

7-8K in about 30K of manufacturing costs. https://electrek.co/2018/05/31/tesla-model-3-teardow-materia...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2021/12/01/ar...

So am not sure a low margin approach would fly right now, simply because of supply constraints for volume production. Probably at a 10M/year run rate, the economies of scale would tip in the low margin high volume favour.

How would you solve this conundrum. Can you just stick to a low margin approach from day 1 ? Focus relentlessly on cost reduction in all parts of the cars except the powertrain and the battery since those are the key reliability aspects.

OR

May be a conventional 5 seater car is an overkill for most usage and can you instead build a version with a 35KWh battery pack but a 2 seater like a Miata. No frills, fast and safe car at nearly half the cost but am not sure if you can maintain the same range.