I agree that Apple has managed to make profit where others have failed. But those markets were relatively similar—consumer electronics and music. Cars are an entirely different thing and a gigantic risk for Apple. A song has never killed anyone but a self-driving car surely could. A few lawsuits would surely damage Apple's reputation and cause it to lose millions of dollars—all eating into any profit they could make.
There are different laws for different countries—safety, environmental, etc. Did you know that carmakers build different vehicles for different geographic markets? In America we don't see the great number of cars that are specific to other regions. Apple would need to design and build different cars (or at least different sizes or modified versions) for different countries—that costs a lot of money. But an iPhone can be sold almost anywhere in the world with little or no modification.
You bring up a good point about maintenance. Hopefully electric cars will be much more reliable than gasoline versions (Tesla's drivetrain, for example, has only a couple dozen moving parts total...I think 18 or 22 for RWD models). But repairs and maintenance have big profit margins (traditional auto dealerships make the vast majority of their money through service, not car sales). So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
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