Arnold Frisch, writing for Seeking Alpha [Free reg-wall]:

Toyota put the first Prius vehicles on sale in Japan in 1997. Since then, including all of the Prius varieties, they have sold 5,300,000 vehicles for approximately $115 billion. This does not include the hybrid Camry and the Toyota and Lexus SUVs. But it took them seven years before they were able to break the barrier and sell 126,000 cars in 2004 (for about $2.8 billion).

And:

Tesla delivered their sports car starting in 2008 and continued deliveries until 2012 when they introduced the Model S. There were only 2,500 sports cars delivered (at $100,000+ each) and the Model S volume was at 75,000 in June 2015 (at an average price of about $85,000). Tesla’s total vehicle sales as of June 2015 were around $6.6 billion. However, they have just started to deliver their SUV and low-cost vehicles are scheduled for delivery starting next year. They also have gone into a sideline, selling battery storage systems for solar collectors. I reference a very good review of the latest variant of the Model S.

So, it took seven years after introduction for Toyota to get into the billion-dollar per year club, and it also took Tesla about seven years.

And:

But there is no argument over the fact that neither Toyota nor Tesla made any money at this for at least six or seven years.

Apple committed to about four years of development work involving 1,800 people – probably at a cost approaching $2 billion per year.

The math is certainly not exact, but if indeed Apple is intent on building, shipping, and selling a vehicle in 2019, it could be (adds seven years in his head) 2026 before they sell enough vehicles to cover their yearly costs.

On a side note, if you tap over to the Prius Wikipedia page, scroll about halfway down, you’ll see the year-by-year worldwide Prius sales numbers. This is, obviously, a very small sample size and a different era, but it is interesting to see these two examples to get even the slightest taste of what’s in store for Apple’s rumored vehicle.