As a crafter myself, I can completely sympathize on the prices of some components like ATAUs, Advanced Scanning Sensors, Flare Filters, etc. that result in some items not worth crafting as you can't get your PED back out of them.
However, I suspect that
MA wants the price of ATAUs to be high to keep the markup on the new L guns like the LP485 high enough that it doesn't cause prices of UL weapons to suddenly plummet.