I mean it's well known that Tesla has a insane profit margin (in the car manufacturing market) when compared to other players. The could sell a car around 30,000$ (adjusted for inflation) if they want to - they in fact came pretty close to that a while ago.

The question is, why would they? Why would they reduce their price if they can actively sell all the cars the manufacture? They in fact had months of wait time until recently. Why would they sell a cheaper car when there is no serious competition cutting their market share? It's no different than apple not reducing the cost of their iphone - they have no incentive to do so as long as they are making money and have no serious competition under-cutting them.

Tesla's pitch is partly 'electric car good for climate' yes, but at the end of the day they are a for-profit company and their main objective would be to maximize profit.

If you take $30,000 in May 2008 and adjust for inflation [1] to February 2019, the equivalent price would be $35,005.

In February 2019, Tesla announced [2] a Model 3 for $35,000.

So if you're looking at the numbers by relative buying power, they weren't doing too bad up until car prices went insane the last two years.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

[2] https://www.tesla.com/blog/35000-tesla-model-3-available-now