Lots of innovation has happened in aircraft electronics. The powerplant? Not so much. Most light aircraft engine designs are four or more decades old, and the only ones cheap enough for a moderately-priced aircraft have carburetors. I don't think you can even buy a car these days with a carburetor, but with airplanes they're still standard, even though fuel injection makes a lot more sense in an airplane than in a car. You can get airplanes with fuel-injected engines, but a fuel-injected Lycoming IO-390 engine (like you'd find in a Cirrus) will cost about $27,000. Used. Just for the engine. You can get a decent car for $27,000, and it will absolutely have a fuel-injected engine. Likely a turbocharger as well. And the car's engine will produce a lot more horsepower.
Oh and you'll have to fuel the airplane with avgas which costs $5/gallon and contains lead, and you have to wonder WTF??
There's no technical reason aircraft engines cannot be turbocharged, fuel-injected, fueled with regular unleaded gas, and cheap. Aircraft engines should have followed the innovation advancements that have happened in car engines, but they haven't. This is probably because of regulation, monopoly power, liability, and a host of other reasons, but as an engineer I find the situation ridiculous.
