It is, but probably for a different reason than you'd think. In automotive, the difficulty is not designing the car, but the facility to mass produce them. Elon found out the hard way. In his words: "it's trivial to design the machine, but it's hard to design the machine, that builds the machine". He is currently facing the same challenge with the production of the raptor engines for starship.
A million dollar low volume "hand made" car can be build by a small team, with relatively few resources. Operating a factory that produces thousands of affordable cars per day takes tens of thousands of people through the entire supply chain.
both of these products have surprisingly high specification, and producing hundreds of thousands of them each day is a serious challenge.
I find the bias towards powerful desktops as the only place any apps are written and tested ridiculous and something we can work to correct long term with progressive web.
Every web dev should use one.
I am fascinated by the low end options, you learn a lot about a system when it's pushed to its limits. Or maybe you learn even more about your pain threshold...
I've heard it said that it's more difficult to make a $10,000 car than it is to make a $1,000,000 car. I don't recall the source, via Horace Dedieu maybe.
My first job out of college was at a spaceship company. One of the most senior engineers told me of the footrest he had designed for early 747 airliners. First Class. He considered it his greatest work.
That foot stool was quite literally more difficult than rocket science.