Former GM CEO on Apple Car: 'They Have No Idea What They're Getting Into'

[flyinmac]

I laugh because this info is coming from a former CEO.

He retired. And he did well for himself.

By your argument, anyone who retires after a long career is suddenly an idiot who knows nothing. That's like saying that one day when you retire from flipping burgers, that you don't know anything about the burger flipping process anymore.

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Says the guy who doesn't want the most profitable company in the world to build a competing product.

Again missing the point. He's retired... Do you really think he's worried about competition? I seriously doubt it. He'd be more worried about someone fishing near his favorite fishing hole.

 

[Carlanga]

So if Apple sells 2 apple cars they would make more money than when Akerson was the CEO of GM right?

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...
Again missing the point. He's retired... Do you really think he's worried about competition? I seriously doubt it. He'd be more worried about someone fishing near his favorite fishing hole.

Stop saying he is retired…. He is currently Vice Chairman and Special Advisor to the Board of Directors for The Carlyle Group. He took a smaller role due to his wife cancer, but he is still in the game.

 

[samcraig]

So if Apple sells 2 apple cars they would make more money than when Akerson was the CEO of GM right?

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Stop saying he is retired…. He is currently Vice Chairman and Special Advisor to the Board of Directors for The Carlyle Group. He took a smaller role due to his wife cancer, but he is still in the game.

So you can speak in hyperbole about the # of cars GM has sold and in the same post correct someone for using the word retired when he is clearly referencing his involvement as CEO of GM? Ok.....

 

[dukebound85]

Apple has almost $200 billion in cash....GM had to be bailed out by the tax payers.

Apple knows precisely what it's doing.

In the electronics business....not automotive

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Phone industry incumbents all over again - circa 2007. We'll see.

computers and phones are much more closely related than a automobile

 

[snowcrasher]

2011: GM wants to be Apple

2015:...

 

[flyinmac]

So if Apple sells 2 apple cars they would make more money than when Akerson was the CEO of GM right?

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Stop saying he is retired…. He is currently Vice Chairman and Special Advisor to the Board of Directors for The Carlyle Group. He took a smaller role due to his wife cancer, but he is still in the game.

You do realize you can retire and still go do something else right? He retired from GM. Now he's doing something else. So what.

He's not currently overly concerned about whether Apple wants to compete with GM. He's not in that role anymore.

Once you leave Burger King, are you still going to be worried about whether another burger joint is going to decrease Burger King's revenue? Probably not, because now you're working at a shoe store.

 

[DakotaGuy]

So what makes the Ex-GM CEO think that Apple will sell the car with only <20% margins?

Seriously, how shortsighted is that guy?

Just because GM couldn't ask higher prices (because they don't know how to build good cars), why should or does Apple have to do the same?

This guy doesn't make any sense.

How many of you will line up for a $100,000 car? At Apple product margins that's about what it will cost you.

 

[GoSh4rks]

Apple doesn't want to sell cars to make money from cars.

They're smarter than that. They want to sell cars to make money from their other goods and services. They probably realized that in order to control the entire experience of using a device like the iPhone they had to get into the car market - having to work with other car companies (fragmentation) is too difficult (kind of like the current troubles with TV).

Currently, most Apple users can leave the Apple ecosystem and feel few effects. If a basic necessity (for most), your car, is dependent on using your phone, you can't just go out and buy an Android now can you.

Plus, they're not just going to make luxury versions - they are going to make mass market versions of these, and they'll probably make very little profit on them. They want every person driving an Apple car.

This is laughable. The percentage of the world's (or even the US's) population that spends even 5% of their day driving a car is TINY.

 

[steve333]

Apple has almost $200 billion in cash....GM had to be bailed out by the tax payers.

Apple knows precisely what it's doing.

Apple makes most of their products in China using near slave labor while
GM had to deal with U.S. unions.
I wouldn't be so quick to crow about Apple's profits. They do know what they're doing-using as cheap a labor as possible while charging inflated prices for their products.
As for GM, they built the machinery that won WWII for us, I'm not as quick as others here to rip them a new one.

I knew this would be the first post. And I am so disheartened to be proven right.

Just because Apple has billions in cash from successful products, does not have any correlation whatsoever to their ability to enter a new market (both new to them and to industry as a whole) without making mistakes. I'd like to point out that in no way do I think Apple should avoid the sector, as the GM former CEO states, because as a company devoted to quality, and who has tons of resources ($$$), they'll be hopefully able to do it justice. But just because they have the means to toy around with the idea of a car, do extensive research, etc... doesn't mean they know exactly what they're doing. Generating billions of dollars in profit on consumer electronics doesn't indicate they know how to make a car.

You're making sense. Sometimes that doesn't fly on a fanboy forum

 

[Arran]

Amid rumors that Apple is developing an electric vehicle...

Maybe it's not "electric vehicle", but "vehicle electrics": Dashboards, instrumentation, controls, switchgear, entertainment, navigation, etc. Stuff that Apple does well (okay, maybe not the navigation )

Car manufacturers already buy these components in.

 

[RaoulDuke42]

I knew this would be the first post. And I am so disheartened to be proven right.

Just because Apple has billions in cash from successful products, does not have any correlation whatsoever to their ability to enter a new market (both new to them and to industry as a whole) without making mistakes. I'd like to point out that in no way do I think Apple should avoid the sector, as the GM former CEO states, because as a company devoted to quality, and who has tons of resources ($$$), they'll be hopefully able to do it justice. But just because they have the means to toy around with the idea of a car, do extensive research, etc... doesn't mean they know exactly what they're doing. Generating billions of dollars in profit on consumer electronics doesn't indicate they know how to make a car.

Explain Tesla.

 

[OneMike]

Apple has almost $200 billion in cash....GM had to be bailed out by the tax payers.

Apple knows precisely what it's doing.

Could go either way. Apple is great at making certain things. Cars are different.

Other than being cool they'd need to go after a niche market to compete. Electric or maybe hybrid are the only places I'd think they would go

 

[Tech198]

This guy looks smart...

Apple may wanna pay attention here...

Apple dived head first into Maps too, and look how that turned out...... Even though its getting better, its still no match on Google, who's been doing it longer.

I don't see what magic Apple can do, but i think Apple also may wanna think about getting into washing machines and other consumers too while their at it...

 

[Lancer]

Can someone find a quote from Nokia in 2005 or 2006 saying Apple shouldn't get into the phone business, they have no idea what they're doing?

LOL I remember that.

I wouldn't bet against Apple doing this but until we see them release a car with the Apple logo on the bonnet I won't believe the rumors.

My bet is they are testing electronics for a manufacture.

 

[McGiord]

All this speculation based on a minivan own by apple and someone hired by the US government to oversee GM before handing it over to a GM employee.

Apple may be doing some research to develop an iCar development kit to ease the way car OEMs integrate their products with Apple stuff.

It doesn't make any sense that Apple will manufacture and commercialize vehicles.

Look over HomeKit and CarPlay Apple isn't fabricating nor will fabricate any device beyond their traditional line of products.

Apple manufacturing quality is really bad. Apple's business model to squeeze Chinese OEM to mass produce products, and replace many of the first gen products over and over during the first year under warranty plus expecting customers to pay the Apple Care tax is ludicrous for a vehicle consumer. If you believe that car OEMs don't fix issues, have fun waiting for Apple to fix some design flaws.

An Apple store cannot service your vehicle. Even with the best design approach a bare bones car has thousands of components.

I think Apple knows what they are doing, it's the people considering Apple making a real fully working car that complies with all regulations who don't know what they are talking about.

 

[sigamy]

"We take steel, raw steel, and turn it into car."

Haha, seriously? Apple takes an abundant amount of materials and makes the most advance and revolutionary technology of our day. Not that it matters if they are marking a car or not, but they make some awesome products.

Exactly. And let's not forget software, where the raw materials of brain power, specs written plain english in a document and UI wireframes are turned into some of the most powerful tools we have.

 

[Glideslope]

Lol

Looks like GM is nervous.

 

[McGiord]

http://www.carthrottle.com/post/14-reasons-apple-should-never-make-a-car/

 

[Gasu E.]

Apple doesn't want to sell cars to make money from cars.

They're smarter than that. They want to sell cars to make money from their other goods and services. They probably realized that in order to control the entire experience of using a device like the iPhone they had to get into the car market - having to work with other car companies (fragmentation) is too difficult (kind of like the current troubles with TV).

Currently, most Apple users can leave the Apple ecosystem and feel few effects. If a basic necessity (for most), your car, is dependent on using your phone, you can't just go out and buy an Android now can you.

Plus, they're not just going to make luxury versions - they are going to make mass market versions of these, and they'll probably make very little profit on them. They want every person driving an Apple car.

I suspect this thread has set some kind of world record for aggregate cluelessness. This one purports to describe some kind of strategy, yet lacks even the most rudimentary understanding of business strategy. Hint: ROI, Return on Capital, Return on... anything.

 

[noveneerhere]

Apple usually wants to be in control of the whole user experience. With few exceptions where they give more wiggle room; iTunes for Windows, new CarPlay and remember Motorola iTunes(https://www.apple.com/pr/library/20...-Motorolas-Next-Generation-Mobile-Phones.html All these three work as gateways to Apple products and is why they accept lack of control.

“We are thrilled to be working with Motorola to enable millions of music lovers to transfer any of their favorite songs from iTunes on their PC or Mac to Motorola’s next-generation mobile phones,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The mobile phone market—with 1.5 billion subscribers expected worldwide by the end of 2004—is a phenomenal opportunity to get iTunes in the hands of even more music lovers around the world and we think Motorola is the ideal partner to kick this off.”

CarPlay an introduction to Apple Car?

 

[kds1]

I don't know if Apple is designing an electric car to sell or not, but I do know, that the first time someone is driving one and gets into a traffic accident, it's going to light up sensationalist media reports and bloggers for WEEKS. People will be saying all sorts of stupid things. It will be a feeding frenzy the likes of which we've never seen (including anti Apple trolls here).

 

[AppleScruff1]

Looks like GM is nervous.

Why? This guy doesn't work there.

 

[HKZ/MST3K]

Apple has almost $200 billion in cash....GM had to be bailed out by the tax payers.

Apple knows precisely what it's doing.

They really don't. Apple has no clue how to manufacture cars or provide the support infrastructure to do so. Apple has no experience in that realm. Hiring a couple hundred engineers to look at the problem is not knowing what they are getting in to. They can't even release a phone OS that's not a buggy mess and they can't even bother to get annual time changes to work without fault and you think they have any clue how to manufacture, sell and support a car business from scratch? Could you possibly be more naive?

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LOL laughably reminiscent of what phone company execs said ahead of the iPhone. And that too was a low margin business -- back then.

And wow, like, they make cars out of STEEL?! Holy crap! If only Apple, say, I dunno -- had some experience pioneering manufacturing techniques around the use of metal, say, I dunno, aluminum...

Making a telephone and a car are two completely different engineering feats. It's like you dumbasses can't think critically on your own. Comparing a device made from aluminum that fits in your hand to a automobile is probably the stupidest thing I've seen you morons bleat about next to the always stupid rumors of Apple making a television. The two couldn't be more different and you idiots just lap this ******** up like it's critical for you to stay alive.

Apple will not make a car. If you believe they will you're incredibly stupid. Yes, say all the things about how the iPhone was in the same situation. An iPhone is not a car, and in ten years when they still haven't made a car I'll be more than happy to laugh in your faces at how hilariously naive you people are.

 

[Skoal]

This coming from company that had to get help from the government? Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

a lot more quotes from top executives in the automotive industry in the coming weeks.......personally, I think they're scared out of their mind

As opposed to getting help from Bill Gates?

 

[HKZ/MST3K]

Apple wouldn't have wanted to partner with GM - its vehicles are hardly innovative.

If you really believe this then you are dangerously ignorant. They make some of the most advanced engines in the world, and their performance cars are among the best in the world. GM may be boring to you, but they have incredibly talented engineers working for them and have for decades.