Simple financial engineering. Sometimes they take the loss but cover it up or push it out using lease terms. The company has profit now but takes a write off later. Good for juicing executive bonus packages.

Also because lease terms are complex they can stack with other promotions or incentives and allow for leases lower than the cost of ownership would have been otherwise. There is a whole lease community dedicated to finding these crazy deals but they wouldn’t be something you could do by just walking into a random dealer.