I don't know if it's perfectly true or not but the common wisdom these days is there's "no" profit in making stuff. Cars, airplanes, toys, clothes, whatever. The "real" money comes from locking in some kind of monthly payment, whether it's a loan or a service plan or insurance or whatever. If they can't do that, they want to collect your data and sell that on an ongoing basis. I hear GM and some other car companies essentially use cars as a way to sell loans. No matter what you buy now, everyone wants to build a "relationship" (money pipeline) with you.