[nano9]

It's not all due to mass production. Modern industrial design has made it so that accidents are expensive.

If you involve yourself and in a minor automobile collision and damage one of your front headlights on your Lexus with adaptive lighting, your total repair cost for the headlight itself will exceed $1000. A new headlight will require removal the front bumper and calibration of the adaptive sensors, both of which add labor costs. It's not just headlights; if you have lane-keeping technology in your vehicle and this is achieved via a forward facing camera, then a windshield replacement exceeds $1000 as well. If you smash your rear bumper into a mailbox and need to replace the whole bumper, you need your parking sensors re-calibrated. And this is with a maintainable car make like Lexus. For the more ostentatious luxury makes, the costs will be significantly more.

You might think, I'll buy a truck then. But trucks also have windshield-integrated forward-facing cameras, backup/parking sensors, and adaptive headlights. You wouldn't save much versus the Lexus.