I do consultancy for manufacturing and the costs of components to the factories are much less than people would ever guess. From the end price quoted for the fix I can have a pretty accurate guess at what this part really costs.
My dad spent his life after WW2 in the motor trade, so I got a lot of exposure to what went on. Many car companies have gone bust or lost money, however the reason is
rarely if ever that they have undercharged consumers for the product (except for one situation). In fact sometimes the opposite is true! Usually it's because the cars have been:
- Unreliable
- rust boxes
- bad reputation (economy, fixability, servicing, design etc..)
- Dealers dumping them because they are not appealing
The one instance where manufacturers go bust through not charging enough, is when their build methods, logistics, design, workforce etc.. is so poor that they needed to charge much more for a car that's worth much less.
As for the laws that protect us, for the value of the product they are extremely limited, we don't even have a lemon law as they do in the US. My BMW i3 range extender had £12 of warranty work in under 3 years, with 2 more common failures yet to happen...the charge unit and capacitors and the REME fault (the combined cost of both being around £12). I
had to sell it as it was worthless as a 2013 model in a private sale due to the reputation of that model year. Fortunately I PXed it to a dealer (and the REME fault finally came up on that trip then reset itself when the dealer went to inspect it!
My issue with that was i had to buy another i3 to get them to agree the PX. Ultimately I had no protection and couldn't at any point reject the car as fault after fault came up. If you have ever had a major problem, you soon find there's very little in law to protect you, bad paint being another common issue on vehicles!