Ex-GM CEO says building cars may not be worth it for Apple

Bloomberg reported on ex-GM CEO Dan Akerson saying building cars may not be worth it for Apple.

“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.
The car industry, with regulatory and safety requirements, is harder than people realize, Akerson said.
“A lot of people who don’t ever operate in it don’t understand and have a tendency to underestimate,” he said.

As John Gruber pointed out, this sounds familiar.

Back when rumours of Apple entering the phone market, then Palm CEO Ed Colligan scoffed at the idea:

Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”