They lose a little on every sale but make it up on volume.
Actually, they’ll lose money BECAUSE of the low volume. When you only intend to sell 20,000 of a model per year, you never make back the R&D and tooling costs. They are NOT going to lose any money on the actual components costs and labor of building the Bolt. If there was a market for 200,000 Bolts per year they would make money because the R&D and tooling costs would be spread over 10x as many vehicles.
The Bolt costs about 4 cents per mile to drive in electricity costs. At $2.75/gal gasoline in CA, a similar size 40mpg car costs 7 cents per mile — plus oil changes that EVs don’t need. If CA did not have such expensive electricity, the cost differential would be even higher. The manufacturers need to hype the lower operating cost instead of the “green” rationale. In NV, it would cost less than 3 cents per mile to drive a Bolt.