Secondly, OP is subtracting the $2,500 rebate from the car payments he's making, so the manufacturer is actually getting ~$6k instead of $3k, which is a significant chunk of the difference between residual and current resale value.
Yes it does, you're just a variable: California requires car companies to sell a certain number of EVs in order to sell other cars in the state.
So companies take their cheapest model, convert it into a passable EV, then their financing arm offers nice incentives to get them out the door and the parent company eats the difference as a cost of doing business in California.
People buy teslas, leafs, i3s everything in my northwest state and we don't have a state rebate or requirement like California. Leafs were ~$250/month here. You see tons of them; when they increase the range a bit, I predict sales will really go up.