[jandrese]

What if the reliability is like "these bearings are known to fail every 10k miles or so, but we have no product refresh planned for at least 3 years so the problem will remain unresolved?"

This is what incremental improvements are supposed to be. Well that and discovering that the vehicle can last till the end of the warranty period with one less bolt in that spot, so you can eliminate it.

[bestham]

You are wrong and right. Wrong because continuous improvement is not about making a vehicle only survive a 3-5 year warranty period. Right because the master of continuous improvement have a 10 year warranty (20000 km, 12500 miles) where I live if you do service at a dealership or authorised service centre and I think this extended warranty influence the decisions about what minimum level of quality the manufacturer will accept.