Material is not the end all - it's how it's used and what it costs. For a shifter/lever body plastic works well.

There's nothing wrong with plastic. Remember that carbon fiber is basically carbon reinforced plastic. My dad would call it FRP for "fiber reinforced plastic". He was a chemical engineer and to him all FRPs fell under a single umbrella, just different uses.

He also worked a lot with titanium, designed a huge plant that processed it. To do what? They get the ore, they extract basically pure titanium, then they burn it into ash. The resulting white ash is used for paint pigment instead of a lead product. A LOT of titanium is used this way - all white paint uses titanium oxide pigment. I was horrified when I learned this (I was 12 or so and totally into jets and submarines) - why didn't they make jet planes or submarines instead? It's more profitable to make white ash for paint.