Ex-GM CEO Thinks Building Cars Won't Be a Good Idea For Apple
Making cars probably wont be a good idea for Apple, according to Dan Akerson, retired chief executive officer of General Motors Co.. According to reports, Apple is targeting car production as soon as 2020.
However, according to him, a push into automobile electronics will certainly be a better move for the iPhone maker.
"I think somebody is kind of trying to cough up a hairball here," Akerson said in an interview to Bloomberg. "If I were an Apple shareholder, I wouldn't be very happy. I would be highly suspect of the long-term prospect of getting into a low-margin, heavy-manufacturing" business.
He noted that the car industry with regulatory and safety requirements is harder than people realize.
"A lot of people who don't ever operate in it don't understand and have a tendency to underestimate," he said.
For Apple it is the best time so far. The company has done a phenomenal business by registering record profits. By the end of December, Apple had totaled $178 billion in cash and now its market value stands at about $745 billion.
According to a person with knowledge, the secretive electric-vehicle project - code named Titan - is already in works and the company plans to hit the production of automobiles as soon as 2020. The automobile might look like a minivan. "They'd better think carefully if they want to get into the hard-core manufacturing," he said of Apple. "We take steel, raw steel, and turn it into car. They have no idea what they're getting into if they get into that."
