Reminds me of a video I was watching on AvE's YouTube channel, must have been his Juicero video, where he said something along the lines of how any idiot can make a high quality product by using expensive materials, but good engineering is bring a high quality product to market at an attractive price.

>any idiot can make a high quality product by using expensive materials, but good engineering is bring a high quality product to market at an attractive price.

it's a cute sentiment, but it throws out on-the-edge engineering work that produces little product, or engineering that is subsidized elsewhere where the cash value is of little importance.

For example, I never thought the fine folks engineering at NASA were idiots, nor the people at defense groups like Northrop Grumman -- but i'd hardly call their wares a good 'cash value'.

A slightly different read given what they said is that they didn't realise that legacy automakers would take advantage of production mandates to snuff out new entrants by selling as few subsidized EVs as they were forced to delay progress as long as possible.

Could equally be considered poor engineering but might be looked on slightly more charitably.

First adopters don't care about the price and actually use it as symbol of value.