Why Apple Should Steer Clear Of The Car Biz

This is an open letter to the management of Apple .

Dear All ,

If you are considering entering the car business, please reconsider. This is not something you should undertake likely. Trust me, I know from experience. I worked for years with General Motors and its subsidiary Delphi. Yes, the tech industry is brutal, but the auto business has other issues. Here are just some of things you need to know:

When you make cars you are effectively getting into bed with the government. That means you might have to produce products on which you know you will lose money. That is simply because the government says so. The government insists on a certain average fuel economy of cars and trucks produced and sold. There is no problem per se with fuel efficiency.

The problem is Americans historically haven't wanted to buy the smaller fuel efficient cars. Americans like big cars. The small ones cost almost as much to produce as the bigger cars, but sell for a lot less. But unlike most industries, you won't necessarily be able to stop making the loss making products.

It gets worse. Quite rightly the government insists on many additional safety features year after year. Even if you comply, you could still be on the hook if your customers don't operate the vehicles correctly. For instance, if the driver of one of your cars can't tell the accelerator (gas) from the brake pedal then you could be blamed. You might be required to fix the problem. And if you are required to do so for a mechanical problem, you can't send a computer program patch through the ether to fix that. You'll have to recall every last vehicle. It's expensive.

You could find yourself in the middle of a conflict that is none of your making. Remember when Toyota had its accelerator problems back a few years ago? That also coincided with the period when the U.S. government owned a stake in General Motors, a major competitor. What a surprise then when it was decided that NASA should investigate the problem. I can't think of any other time when NASA , the organization that sent men to the moon and back, would be called to investigate such a thing. Was it just a coincidence that the government then owned the stake in a major competitor? You decide.

Toyota did end up paying more than $1 billion to the  Justice Department for other issues surrounding the accelerators issue despite the fact that the National Travel Safety Board said of the problems: "are all consistent with pedal misapplications by the driver," according to the Detroit News, which keeps an eye on such things.

None of this is to say that Apple should curtail plans that involve cars, just don't get into actually building them. Yes, Apple has been a game changer in the world. But making cars is a whole other world.

Yours SC

Apple did not respond immediately for a request for comment.