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That was the whole point, that manufacturers need the incentive to build the vehicles. It turns out that even with the $7,500 credit factored in, EVs range from unprofitable, to barely marginally profitable. Tesla is somewhere around break-even on their lowest priced Model 3.
I'd have thought a low priced commuter EV might be fairly easy to make profitable, but it seems not. The battery alone in a 40 kWh vehicle (~150 mile range) is about $5,000. You don't want to merely recoup the marginal cost to build a vehicle though, so the price to the consumer must be a bit higher.
With sufficient volume, I'd think a $19,000 commuter EV would be possible, but I don't know. Perhaps the public acceptance of less than 40 kWh EVs is gone when higher range options exist at much higher prices.
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