Losses could be slightly higher on the Ampera-E due to shipping, tariffs, etc but this does somewhat verify the $10K/Bolt loss number that has been thrown around for about a year now.
I am dismayed when I see blanket statements like "GM is losing $9k on every Volt" or "GM is losing $11k on every Bolt EV." That's a kindergarten-level of financial analysis.
We need to make a clear distinction between
sunk costs and
unit costs. Sunk costs -- that is, costs which have already been paid and can't be recovered -- include R&D and tooling up the assembly lines to produce a model of car. Once those are done, it's pretty silly to charge them against the profit margin for sales of those cars. Let me give an example of why it's pretty silly:
Let's say that GM made just one Bolt EV and then shut the line down, never to make another. Using "kindergarten accounting", the entire cost of R&D and tooling up would be charged against that one car! The cost, figured that way, would be in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars for that one car. Contrariwise, let's say that the Bolt EV proves to be a very popular car, and GM continues to make it for several years with only minimal year-to-year changes. In that case, again using "kindergarten accounting", the R&D and tooling up costs would be spread over hundreds of thousands of cars. By kindergarten accounting, then, the cost per car keeps getting
significantly lower the longer GM keeps the car in production, altho the per-year drop in cost tapers off over time.
In reality, once production actually starts, it's the unit cost that matters. The sunk costs of R&D and tooling-up don't matter, because they have already been paid.
Any claim that GM is "losing" X number of dollars per car is charging all the development costs against a single year of estimated production. If the car model is made for two years, then the development cost, by that same kindergarten accounting, drops to half. But of course, in real life no such drop in cost happens. Again, the sunk costs have already been paid for, and are irrelevant to the question of whether or not the auto maker should continue making the car. It's also irrelevant to what the ongoing profit margin on the car is.
(Hopefully most if not all of my readers realize there is a fallacy in my argument: Sunk costs certainly do matter in the larger picture, as they affect GM's bottom line. GM's bean-counters certainly will be watching costs for R&D and tooling-up closely, and if they think a potential model doesn't have sufficient market potential to justify those development costs, then it's likely GM won't put the model into production. But there are exceptions to that rule, too; for example, compliance ares are not expected to justify their development costs.)
I realize that most people (certainly including myself) don't want to be accountants. But altho I'm far from being a "financial guy", I think it's absurd in discussions of auto maker finances, to keep using this kindergarten level of analysis. I think the average person is smart enough to be able to understand the importance of distinguishing between sunk costs and unit costs for making cars, once the concepts are explained to him or her.
