There are various factors that go into the cost and price of a vehicle that many people do not understand. There are project budgets, R&D, labor, materials, sales estimates, environmental regulations, and much more. You have to get a rough idea of what all this is going to cost and how many you are going to sell to configure a budget for vehicle model. This will tell you where to allocate the money for your research and development(R&D).
One huge factor that gets applied right off the top is environmental regulations due to CAFE and carbon credits. If the cooperate average fuel economy numbers are below the government regulation, then that company has to either buy credits from other companies like Tesla and such or pay hefty fines. Either way, it will cost them tens/hundreds of millions of dollars which gets spread across the vehicles they make.
Then you have other regulations like government mandated ABS, air bags, roll over pillars, stability control systems and most recently back up cameras. These used to be only for high end trims/packages, but now they are required standard by law. There is also fuel economy and emissions regulations which eat up a lot of (R&D) money as well which in turn is spread over the whole model.
In regards to trucks, a lot of R&D money is spent on making it "best in class" useless 30k tow ratings which gets spread across the trucks in that model. Not only that, but it eats up a lot of the initial budget that can be spent elsewhere like making it more fuel efficient or more reliable. Hence the reason why I find it useless because I know that it is utilizing money that can be spent on making other things that most truck owners buy even better, but instead is used to beef up numbers that less than 5% of your customers will use.
Of course, technology eats up a lot of the budget as well which is why those high trims and tech packages cost so much. Labor and material cost is always increasing with inflation so the cost will keep going up in these areas unless for some odd reason worker demand less pay and/or benefits.
A1ARealtorRick is right that we only have ourselves to blame. As long as the consumer keeps demanding more power, more capabilities, and newer models then the prices will keep going up. It used to be that the makes didn't change the truck models that often so they were able to keep costs lower. But with today's competitive environment, truck makes have to come out with major changes and more power/capabilities with new models every decade or so just to compete which costs a lot of money. If truck consumers were not demanding so much stuff gripping over who has better what and were happy driving a truck model that spans 15 years or more instead of needing to have a major overhaul every 8-10 years, then the costs to make these trucks would be much lower.
So what will it take to lower truck prices...... Stop demanding model changes or complete updates ever 8-10 years. Stop demanding more power than you will need (more power can be had aftermarket anyway). Stop caring about "best in class". Stop caring about tow ratings that you will never tow. Stop demanding more tech. Stop voting in people that make EPA CAFE requirements so strict. Stop demanding more pay for the same work(it increases inflation and cost of goods) Stop....... you get the picture.
