Reality. People want hassle-free cars that are fun to drive and have creature comforts. A person buying a car to have for 3 or 5 years doesn’t care if the transmission will last 175k miles.
If you want that to change, don’t blame the car makers. Convince the American car-buying public that they should insist on no-frills cars with manual transmissions so the guy that ends up with their car 10 years later has an easier time.
Good luck!
It doesn’t make sense to engineer the engine to last 300K+ miles and body that never rusts and a transmission that is a crap shoot after 150k. Makes no sense. If new car buying public wants to know why cars depreciate so quickly well there’s your answer - the auto trans.