Periodically drive hard to reduce EGR clogging?

You seem to be missing some real history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

 

Toyota seems to go the opposite way a lot of the time.

For my Gen 1, they built a steering rack for a 3 year, 36,000 mile warranty, then gave me a new one at 12 years and 194,000 miles, under a program they adopted to preserve customer goodwill after Toyota decided the things were wearing out too fast.

My Gen 3 has an inverter that was built for an 8 year, 100,000 mile warranty (longer in CARB states), which they will now replace for free out to 20 years and unlimited miles, as a settlement in a lawsuit from folks who didn't think the earlier extension to 15 years and unlimited miles was generous enough.

 

Those wikipedia articles provide nothing new to this topic. Planned obsolence is exactly what i tried to explain: target for the lifetime. There’s always a target. How to design anything without a reasonable target? And laser printer cartridges cannot be compared to automobiles or anything complex with bunch of regulations and such There’s no counter in car engine to make it quit at some mileage. And it would also be extremely difficult to design it mechanically so that it quit at certain mileage and still work well (and keep customers happy) up to that point.

If some component much exceed the target it is redesigned if there are commercial benefits to gain. But when contemplating the redesign one must take into account so many things. Like the overall quality. The higher the lifetime the better quality (and customer satisfaction) in general. Something that is designed and tested with 200kmil target in mind is likely to be more reliable during the first 100kmil than a product that has 100kmil target. In other words, something that is designed and tested to be very reliable during the warranty period usually also has long lifetime as bonus.

If there is any engineer out there who has reached cost&manufacturability target, but has been told to go back to drawing boards (i.e. spend money) just because product is ”too good, too long lifetime” please step forward

 

I worked for an engineering department of a Fortune 500 company and occasionally there were efforts to reduce costs while maintaining or improving quality. Sometimes those efforts had unforeseen consequences on quality or reliability but not often. The next revision or generation always addressed the flaws.

Of all manufacturers, Toyota arguably followed by Honda made their reputation on quality and reliability. Back in the late fifties and early sixties, Toyota in the US was a joke but Toyota responded and built a well deserved quality reputation by the seventies. Sometimes we forget those "good ol days" had mainstream vehicles that needed transmissions, rings and valve jobs by 50k miles. All available at Sears Auto. Toyota and Honda changed that with affordable vehicles to boot.

At the time Mercedes was the quality standard. Now we complain when we don't get 200,000 trouble free miles, often because our 1978 Corona did while our neighbors went through several Fords or Chevys. Then our vastly improved 2002 Camry did it again without issues. We were then lulled into Toyota invincible engineering with the complex yet reliable gen2 Prius.

Did the engineers attempt a value engineering on Gen3 while still gaining features and mpg? Yes. Were their major flaws? Yes. Did they fix the flaws in Gen4? Yes. was there planned obsolescence? No.

The best engineers with an unlimited budget failed twice on the Space Shuttle. It happens. Too bad they did not go for a reengineered Gen2. We would not have SpaceX crashing every self landing prototype in their South Texas facility.