The main reason is the obvious one - they’d rather not lose ~23% of their sales. In a competitive industry with lots of choices, you have to partially meet the consumer where they are. Even if the consumers’ preferences don’t maximize your production efficiency. It’s the same reason that cars come in colors other than black, even though only offering one color would be more efficient (and therefore a higher profit margin) for the manufacturer. So if there are consumers who want something different than “small sedan and large sedan,” you either meet their needs or lose their business - which is why Toyota offers a compact car and a two-door coupe and a host of luxury sedans (large and small) under their Lexus brand.
There are other reasons. Having a breadth of models protects you if consumer sentiment changes. If, for example, interest rates rise and there’s a shift in consumer preferences towards less expensive cars, Toyota’s got the Yaris already there. Also, Toyota’s a global company - while some models might be light sellers in the U.S., they’re stronger sellers in other markets. So again, the Camry’s their best seller in the U.S., but the Yaris is their best seller in Europe. Also, customers exhibit brand loyalty and “stickiness,” so making sure you have a product that meets their needs at one point in time helps you sell them cars when their needs change - so that young person who buys a Yaris or a coupe is more likely to buy the Camry or Rav4 when they want/need a bigger car later in life.
These many models are distinguished not just by their engines - the cars are very different, to meet different needs.
Yeah, I think not:
Back when these types of batteries were niche and new, and Tesla was leading the charge with their in-house battery development and innovation, that might have been plausible. Now that the market has matured, and these batteries are getting commoditized, there’s not as much value-add for Tesla anymore. The most likely outcome is that large-scale batteries go the way of solar panels - commodities that end up being produced almost entirely by lowest-cost (for any given level of quality) Chinese producers. Their Megapack already uses CATL cells, so CATL entering the market to provide those batteries directly to consumers in their own storage product is going to really put the brakes on Tesla’s ability to grow that segment.
Again, probably a factor in Baglino leaving. Tesla was an energy company leading the transition from fossil fuels to renewables (that happened to make cars). Now it’s a robotics/AI company (that happens to make cars). I wouldn’t look to energy to be the future of the company going forward, since that’s probably not where Musk is going to want to put his focus. Large-scale batteries for EV’s and storage is now a solved problem, and I don’t think Musk is nterested in the business of solved problems - regardless of whether they would be very lucrative business opportunities for his publicly traded company.