> The evaluation fee is US$185,000. Applicants will be required to pay a US$5,000 deposit fee per requested application slot when registering. The deposit will be credited against the evaluation fee. Other fees may apply depending on the specific application path. See the section 1.5 of the Applicant Guidebook for details about the methods of payment, additional fees and refund schedules.
There are cars that are more expensive than that, so setting up a new (g)TLD is really not that difficult or expensive for any moderately large organization.
At this point, just about any random word in the dictionary has probably been made into a TLD:
https://ipinfo.io/AS3389#block-domains
https://nic.ford/
https://nic.lincoln/