I would expect something like a new VW car interface, that is put into millions of cars, to pass some kind of internal design review. How do these things (like

I would expect something like a new VW car interface, that is put into millions of cars, to pass some kind of internal design review. How do these things (like touch controlled AC sliders without backlight) get introduced, which would take two minutes of usability testing to be thrown out? Can this just be explained by cost savings, or is there something else going on?