why does it take so long for cars to change their design drastically?
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The idea of design is to marry aspects of functionality and aesthetics into a product that meets market requirements and appeal.
Functionality includes aspects of safety, performance, reliability, manufacturability, human interface design, compliance to regulations, and many more areas. For a product as complex as a car, many areas of expertise and sub elements need to be coordinated – engines, drivetrains, body parts, internal electronics. Some sub elements will require external coordination – few, if any, car manufacturers build all components themselves. Parts are bought from other companies who also need to be consulted.
To meet market requirements means getting costs and production capacity along with the appeal to the segment of customers that one wishes to target. These aspects can involve large investments in equipment and factories. All of this takes time and money – smaller changes can be more easily accommodated in existing factories. Re-using engines and other components reduces effort significantly but also means designs cannot change dramatically.
Many of these aspects have decades of iteration and built in expectations to them. Any decision to change, especially major changes, will risk alienating customers, adding to costs and time of development and testing. In a competitive environment, mistakes can be disastrous to profits. Manufacturers that target a niche market – ultra luxury or very high performance might take more design risk because their market demands it. But the high volume, mid-market is too large to risk major or unproven changes.
Changes require work and then validation. You’d also need all suppliers to redo their tooling which takes time, money, and effort.
It’s cheaper to iterate slowly and reuse the same parts over and over including in multiple models.
Companies like Tesla can move much faster because they are more vertically integrated and have no issues making changes every few weeks.
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