Car prices haven’t gone up, the average purchase prices of cars has gone up but that’s because people are buying more expensive cars, Large trucks, SUVs, luxury sedans, higher trims etc.
If you look at lower end sedans there price hasn’t changed much and has even gone down. For example if you look at the Chevy Malibu the current base price is $25,100 , in 2014 the base price was $22,340 or $29,400 adjusted for inflation, in 2004 it was $18,700 or $31,067
Auto workers wages have gone down but they’ve steadied in recent years in 2004 hourly wage was $21.71 or $36.07 adjusted for inflation, in 2014 it was $21.38 or $28.17 adjusted for inflation now they are around $30.
So since 2004 the price for a car has gone down 24% and auto wages have also gone down 20%. The recent UAW contract wage increases with little to no increase in price shows there is some room for workers to get more out of that $25,000 cost pie, but there would be no room if that pie is shrunk to $10,000 to compete with Chinese manufacturers.
Where are you getting that they’re potentially worse? They may have some adverse effects but they seem minor compared to sugar. For aspartame there seems to be some studies possibly linking it with cancer, but those are very limited and even after those studies came out the WHO reaffirmed it’s safety at normal levels. Meanwhile actual sugar has been proven to cause diabetes, heart disease, obesity etc. Sucralose doesn’t seem to show any adverse effects at normal doses.
A lot of the controversy on artificial sweeteners comes from the sugar lobby combined with moral panics and conspiracies on using “chemicals” in foods.