If you raise MSRP and give a discount, then you're back at the "real" MSRP.
Yeah no kidding...
I bought an autobahn gti 1 year old with 13k miles on it for <23k$ in 2017 and I'm still being offered 20k+ for it from dealers today... That just tells me there are a lot of people willing to pay a lot more today than they were a few years back. If I'm a manufacturer and selling the same car from a few years back, all of my upfront costs have been accounted for at this point, so why change profits by producing more and charging less?
It's no different for my q7 either... They're offering me the same amount I paid for it, and an equivalent newer q7 will run me nearly 40k more than I paid for my current one.
I think that nothing is going to go back to the way it was before. EV are expensive to produce, so average car cost will keep climbing, especially as many countries try to reduce private vehicle ownership for environmental reasons. Gas cars are going to climb in cost just because they can and will be produced less (so per car development cost goes up). Really this reads to me like there will be more conversion and maturation in the manufacturer market by moving to direct to consumer models and scaling cars to be more product-like in nature, where all features ship on all models and you simply subscribe to what feature you want as the owner, regardless of being 1st, 2nd, 3rd owner, etc... Guess we'll see!