This business plan is clearly based on following directions from a GPS.
The first thing a GPS says:

Acquiring satellites...

For the record -- right now US dollars are worth more than Canadian. 1.00 USD = 1.01230 CAD

News for nerds. Resumes that matter.

I have rolled through more stop signs than most. I passed my time with moral relativism, until work sent me to Europe for a couple weeks with a rental car (circa 1998). During those two weeks, I never rolled through a stop sign -- because where it made sense, they put up Yield signs. Where it made sense, there are Stop signs. I rolled through the Yields, I stopped at the Stops. It made so much sense while I was there. And back in the USA, it still frustrates me that we love our Stop signs, and can't trust our population with Yield signs.

Last time I tried Foxit -- it would not let you select text and copy it, so the text can be copied into another app. Copying text was a premium feature (cue the advertising for the $$ upgrade). Foxit is smaller and faster. I loved Foxit up to that point, but absent that feature I went right back to Adobe Acrobat.

So that's profitable, as in they bring in more revenue than expenses.
But is it a reasonable profit for a company worth $2.9B?

From the historical-perspective dept.
I keep track of CPU and graphics card prices from pricewatch.com, for no-good-reason.
slashdot does not like my long lists (too few characters per line) so here are the abbreviated lists which keep the most expensive options.
Here are my scrapes from ~6 years ago:

Sep 16, 2003 List of Graphics Cards
$384 - Fire GL Z1 128mb
$696 - Fire GL X1 256mb
$529 - Fire GL X1 128mb
$469 RADEON 9800 Pro Ultimate
$373 - RADEON 9800 Pro Ultimate 128
$417 - RADEON 9800 Pro 256MB
$294 - RADEON 9800 Pro 128MB
$368 - RADEON 9800 All-In-Wonder Pro
$192 - RADEON 9800 128MB
$299 - RADEON 9700 Pro Ultimate
$266 - RADEON 9700 Pro
$389 - GeForce FX 5900 256MB
$235 - GeForce FX 5900 128MB
$251 - GeForce FX 5800 128MB


6/16/2003 List of CPUs:
$467 - Xeon 2.8GHz 533FSB
$315 - Xeon 2.66GHz 533FSB
$235 - Xeon 2.4GHz 533FSB
$236 - Xeon 2.0GHz 533FSB
$839 - Opteron 244
$708 - Opteron 242
$280 - Opteron 240
$451 - Athlon XP 3200
$440 - Athlon XP 3200 400
$249 - Athlon XP 3000
$294 - Athlon XP 3000 400
$282 - Athlon MP 2800
$205 - Athlon MP 2600
$158 - Athlon MP 2400
$127 - Athlon MP 2200
$199 - Athlon MP 2100
$122 - Athlon MP 2000
$147 - Athlon MP 1900
$149 - Athlon MP 1800
$115 - Athlon MP 1600
$108 - Athlon MP 1500

imagemagick can also compare two images, and tell you how different they are. That is -- quantify the differences by returning a floating point number or two (PSNR, RMSE) in a way that a more-compressed JPEG image will return a correspondingly different floating point value. I know the question concerns two JPEG-compressed images, but if you do have an original image -- and you want to test which is closest to the original, ImageMagick can do that. Use the ImageMagick compare function.
See http://www.imagemagick.org/script/compare.php

Also, [[www.gimp.org]] is able to look at an image and approximate what JPEG compression quality setting was used, and use that same quality setting to save an output JPEG copy of the image. So -- they have some algorithm inside of their application which takes an image and returns (a good guess of) the corresponding jpeg quality value.
Of course, this does not help you if the image was saved with a lousy JPEG quality value, like 10/100, and later saved at a much higher value, like 98/100. Since the algorithm only sees the last image, it would tell you the quality value is 98/100, even though the contents of the image would indicate the results of 10/100 compression, because of multi-generational lossy compression.

Nothing illegal done? Let's start with the dishonest loan brokers. Those brokers had people come in with a $40,000/yr salary, but put on the application that the salary was $160,0000/yr. Of course, these were no-doc loans, so no documentation was required. There was a lot of of fraud going on. Let's send a few thousand loan brokers to jail. Anyone with me?

> I want, need, have needed for years an electric car. I want 100 Klicks per charge. It only has to do maybe 100 Kph max. OK, so I need to re-buy the batteries every five years or so. I do not want a car that goes 0 to 110 Mph in 3 seconds. That is just stupid. It should cost around 15 grand. Where is that car?

Let's look at some real-world examples -- the Prius can go about 7 miles on battery-only power at 35mph max. Replacement batteries are about $8k. They start at $23k.

Fast forward two years: the Chevy Volt can go 40 miles on battery power. Replacement batteries: ???, but most be more than $8k. They will start (I'm guessing) $40k.

Rewind 12 years: GM's EV-1 was produced for: well, they spent about $1.5B for 1500 cars - that's around $1M each. Higher production numbers: let's guess $100k. Batteries (replaced every 3 years or so - guessing again): $50k. Not close to $15k. GM bet big that they would find a significant battery break-through (the breakthrough that has been "just 5 years away" for the past 25 years). What do you do with 1500 cars that will require a $50k replacement battery pack? Recall them, and shred them.

Toyota's Rav4 EV is a contender. Though battery packs for that vehicle are $26k (so says Wikipedia). I've seen used ones on ebay in reasonable shape for $60k. Except for cost -- this one is a winner for you.

The Aptera has 3 wheels so it can be classified a motorcycle, and not meet all the safety requirements and testing that cars need. (neighborhood cars - max speed of 25mph and another way to avoid being tested as a "real" car - are not included here) It's much lighter and easier to get speed and distance out of the batteries (plus batteries are better today).

Assuredly -- if someone could build a viable EV for $15k, they would, and they would make a killing. Your $15k goal is too low for today's battery technology.