Generally speaking Toyota is conservative in terms of rolling out new technologies and sticks with what's proven. For example the base Camry has a 2.5L engine and 8 speed auto transmission and the base Accord a 1.5 turbo and 10 speed auto. Toyota also goes more in depth terms of QA and testing on individual parts than others.
From an article on the Toyota - BMW Supra/M4 collaboration,
"...BMW couldn’t believe how extensive some of our quality and efficiency studies were as parts came into shape one by one. We would take every bit down to a fastener or rivet, and put it through our stringent quality control and a dozen other testing, we’d ship thousands of parts back to Japan for analysis. That is normal to us."
From an article on the Toyota - BMW Supra/M4 collaboration,
"...BMW couldn’t believe how extensive some of our quality and efficiency studies were as parts came into shape one by one. We would take every bit down to a fastener or rivet, and put it through our stringent quality control and a dozen other testing, we’d ship thousands of parts back to Japan for analysis. That is normal to us."
http://club4ag.com/chief-engineer-tetsuya-tada-reveals-the-a...