Plus, competition is really an illusion in this current marketplace.
All the different brands are often all made in the same building. Sometimes with the same parts.
THIS. So many people don't realise this. Car manufacturers have this down a tee. Tool manufacturers, too.
My Ford Focus shares so many components with the same model year (and later) Mazda 3. You can use the engine mounts from one on the other, for example. There are many other shared components, too.
VW does this across its range of brands, Skoda, VW, Audi, Polestar, Porsche. Its all about the marketing simply being different for the same junk.
Glad we could connect over the economics of toasters. :)
Sometimes I pause to think and for "all the advancement of engineering and design", we still only have two or three suppliers in certain fields for certain things. Boeing and Airbus for large commercial jets, for example.
It feels like we should be so much further in front of the "Technological" curve if only we slowed down to speed up, instead of just trying to constantly be fast.