zlacker

>I had cooling system problems that required hours of labor to get to just to replace a plastic part that cost $5 where an aluminum one would cost $7.

If the car has 10 places where the manufacturer saves 2 dollars, that is 20 dollars a car. At around 2.5 Million cars shipped each year that is 50 Million Euros each year profit for BMW.

The entire car industry is extremely cost sensitive, especially right now, with so much global competition and little consolidation.

The issue also isn't that the part is cost optimized. The issue is that it fails.

>>consta+(OP)
A car (especially ICE but even EVs) consists of tens of thousands of components. People like to point at things in cars and say "why did they save five cents there? And 10 cents here?", and the simple reason is if you bump all these components up one "quality level", if you will, that's thousands of bucks just in material costs. The twenty dollars of per-car savings are not profit, they're unit cost savings, which will contribute to profit, but also price. And margins in the car industry are rather tight, buyers are cost sensitive, it's not an industry where you save 10$ on parts and are able to pocket that, I don't think.

>>former+mr1
>it's not an industry where you save 10$ on parts and are able to pocket that

Why not? If you pay the suppliers 20 dollars less for those parts for each car, that is pure profit.

Keep in mind that cars are priced and developed for specific market segments. Cars aren't developed and then a price is decided based on what the components cost. Also keep in mind that some of the most exclusive and luxurious cars in the world (Lamborghini and Bugatti) share parts with some of the most mundane mass produced cars from VW.