Haven't we already gone over this??

This is why I'm so confused about why you're so intent on making this particular point?

I apologize in advance for using more than a couple sentences to explain this, but I feel like I need to make it very clear:

• Let's say you have a factory that has a robot, it's assembling part of a car.
• The robot costs $1 million dollars, and we estimate it can do its job a million times (say about 100k cars/year averaged over 10 years). So the depreciation per unit from this robot will add $1/car
• Next year we buy a second robot, install it right next to the first as part of a second line. It costs the same, and has the same expectations. The depreciation per car for this robot will also be $1/car. Whether we produce 100k cars, or 200k or 50k, it doesn't matter, the depreciation per car from these robots will be the same.
• Then we buy a third robot, this time we get it on sale, it's the exact same thing, same expectations, but we only spend $500k on it, now the depreciation per car from that robot is only $0.50/car. If the factory this robot is in makes 200k cars, while the first factory makes 200k cars, then depreciation/car in the second factory will be lower even though it's an "entire second factory"

Now factories aren't all robots that get depreciated per unit. They also have costs that are depreciated just by time (straight line, sum of years, etc.), this can change year to year, but it's not dependent on units. So when a factory first opens up, these fixed costs will contribute more per unit when production is low, and less if it's high. Also many depreciation formulas have much more initial depreciation, that decreases over time, so assuming no significant changes we should expect depreciation per unit to decrease over time.

As far as I can tell, this expected trend on a per unit basis, decreasing over time with one factory, and then jumping up when a second (lower volume) factory starts selling units, is exactly what we've seen with Tesla. This is what you see with basically any company, it's not surprising or unexpected.