Prices of the cars

[Eric.B]

There was recently help buttons added to this section in 1.18.7, in the world map. I'll append their information to the end although the data may be slightly different than 1.18.4.

In short, the "Unit Cost" is the Material Costs unit, the Factory Costs per unit, and the labor costs per unit. It's how much it costs to produce one unit.

The "Corporate Cost" is ALL of your costs (branch, admin, marketing, etc.) rolled into the "Unit Cost". This is how much you need to price your vehicles to make a profit. Assuming you sold (in 1.18.4) all the vehicles you produce and have in reserve. (In 1.18.7, it's just the vehicles you produce.)

So the "Real Costs" of your vehicle is the "Unit Cost". But if you sell for a dollar more than that, you will not make a profit because you will not cover your embedded costs from running your business. The more vehicles you produce, the closer "Corporate Cost" will be to your unit costs.

So in summation you use Corporate Cost as your pricing guideline for profitability. If you believe you're only going to sell 50% of the units you produce or have in reserve, then you would take the difference, $1981-$846 = $1135 and add this back into the corporate costs $1981 + $1135 = $3116. Meaning if you sold 50% of the vehicles produced and in reserve, your breakeven point per unit would be $3116...

Hopefully that clears it up for you, feel free to ask if you have any more questions.

Here are the help buttons in 1.18.7 on this topic:

Code:

This is the Unit Manufacturing Costs for each vehicle. This cost factors in only manufacturing costs of the selected vehicle. This is the break even point for manufacturing if you sold every unit manufactured unit this month. Here is a breakdown of how it is generated:
(Factory labor costs this month + base factory costs + production line costs + (vehicle unit costs * number of vehicles produced)) divided by number of vehicles produced.

Code:

This is the Total Corporate and Unit Cost per Unit. In short this is the break even price for the selected vehicle portion of cooperate expense IF you sold every vehicle you produce this month. (Including non selected vehicles.) This price only includes a portion of corporate expenses based on the amount of this vehicle you have compared to other vehicles. Let's break down how this is calculated:
Selected vehicle expense= (Factory labor costs this month + base factory costs + production line costs + (selected vehicle unit costs * number of selected vehicles produced)) divided by number of selected vehicles produced.        
Corporate expenses = This month's Lobbying, Administrative, Construction, RnD, Branch, Marketing, Labor, Racing, and Misc Costs
Break even price = Selected vehicle expense + (Corporate expense Divided by all vehicles built this month.)
This information will allow you to calculate break even prices even if you do not sell all your vehicles. For example, If you only sold half the vehicles you produced, then using the 'Unit Manufacturing Costs' you would double the difference between the 'Unit Manufacturing Costs' and the 'Corporate and Unit Cost per Unit' then add that back in to the 'Unit Manufacturing Cost' to find your new break even point.