Duragrouch

First, I don't think any company spends anywhere close to $10 million on a new road race bike tire, unless it's the very first tire they have ever made.

Car tires are changing in size much more often than in the past, plus tread designs are constantly changing (the exception was in the 1970s, GM established their Tire Performance Criteria or TPC, and suddenly every brand's tread design for GM looked the same), requiring all new mold tooling. Car tire molds are much more advanced. The materials are more advanced due to performance and durability under heat (both ambient and self-generated), as well as under extreme cold, it's nearly universal these days that all car parts are tested down to -40C/F (same temp in C or F).

Now let's look at road race bike tires: I haven't bought any in decades, but last I did, they had no tread, they were all smooth. 700c x 23 is going to be the same size bead diameter and section height now as 40, 30, 20, and 10 years ago, and that means the molds should be the same over many years, except for lettering, and from what I see, these days it is a printed label and not molded letters, and the mold is the biggest unique capital cost, unlike the machines that process the raw materials which stay the same. The difference is then in changes to rubber formulation, the carcas, and belt, and all of those materials have advanced development in high performance car tires before bike tires, and making prototype runs with those variables, but all in the same mold, which, as I said, is reused for a smooth road tire, means low prototype costs. Road race bike tires operate in a MUCH narrower temperature envelope than car tires. So the development costs are vastly less than for car tires. Marketing probably costs more. Thus, the reason road-race bike tire makers chase this market is because it is high margin, they make more profit on them than car tires, when they can get the well-heeled to pay premium prices. And if you think there is no possibility of collusion or unstated gentleman's agreements on pricing between makers, you haven't been paying attention to myriad other products and industries where that has occured.

Used to be, you'd see some quality products being made unchanged for years, even decades. But product makers figured out there is less profit in that, than frequent change and convincing consumers that the newer product is better. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, it's just different. At the pinacle of sports, what competitor wants to have doubts that their setup isn't the best available?

Now let's contrast this with small sailboats, "sailing dinghies"; Many models of these have fleets used by many schools and universities, and individual racers, that want to know that when they invest in a boat, it won't be useless in a couple of years. So the race sanctioning bodies establish "one-design" criteria, and the boats stay the same, year after year, decade after decade. You get advances when a whole new model is introduced, and folks can chose whether to start racing in that class, or just stay with the old class at low cost.

There used to be good reasons for expensive road race bikes, like hand-built steel frames, and craft involved in making the components. Now they have molded frames, and CNC machining, which lowers the cost, and the groupos (component sets) alone cost thousands of dollars. I have zero interest. I'll take the production sports car version of bike parts; sporty, but good value for the cost. Same for bike tires.

Rant over.