Ex-GM CEO warns Apple against making a car
- feb
- 18
Former GM CEO Dan Akerson is warning Apple to stay away from the car business. While it's been widely reported that an Apple Car might be on its way, Akerson says that Apple should focus their car efforts on in-car entertainment systems like CarPlay, rather than get into the low-margin, highly-regulated car manufacturing business, according to Bloomberg:
"I think somebody is kind of trying to cough up a hairball here," Akerson said in a telephone interview. "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.
It was first reported last week that Apple was working on a car project, code-named Titan. The project is said to involve hundreds of employees working on an electric vehicle that at this point resembles a minivan.
Akerson's comments seem to be along the same lines as former Palm CEO Ed Colligan's thoughts on the prospect of an iPhone back in 2006, when he said:
"PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in."
And we all know how that turned out.
While Apple may indeed find themselves unable to successfully enter the car market, at this point it seems like a mistake to simply write them off.
Source: Bloomberg
