Every plane you fly in commercially has at least 2 extremely reliable engines, and each one is certified to be able to handle flying the entire plane safely for an extended period of time to make it back to an airport in case of failure. The certification is called ETOPS [1], if a plane has 90 minute ETOPS certification it cannot fly more than a 90 minute flight from an airport. This appears to be a low-cost method of having a couple of minutes of safe controlled flight in case of a failure, that difference can make the difference between life and death for a GA plane.
This reddit thread has some good responses as to why Honda (who probably produces more engines in a month than Lycoming has in decades) doesn't make GA engines:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1lxlco/why_doesnt...