Earlier last week, a rumor surfaced in which it was suggested that Apple could be working on an electric car of their own and had a team of hundreds already in place. Now whether or not these rumors hold any merit, they have certainly opened the doors to a lot of debate and speculation, and former General Motors CEO Dan Akerson is the latest to weigh in on the rumor.Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, Akerson seemed to be rather skeptical of Apple’s plans, and whether or not the rumors are true, Akerson pointed out that there intricacies and difficulties in the car business that many who do not operate it in would most likely underestimate, which is what he thinks Apple is doing.
According to Akerson, “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. A lot of people who don’t ever operate in it don’t understand and have a tendency to underestimate.”
Akerson goes on to point out that profit margins on phones are a lot higher than cars, although Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has famously stated many times before that Apple does “a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it.” Akerson ended the interview by saying, “They’d better think carefully if they want to get into the hard-core manufacturing. We take steel, raw steel, and turn it into car. They have no idea what they’re getting into if they get into that.”
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