“Looking for improved business models for the personal computer business, Apple CEO Steve Jobs often used to cite automobile makers, though never American car companies. The examples were invariably German. Whether it was the design aesthetic of his Mercedes sedan or Porsche’s success at selling high-margin cars as entertainment devices, Jobs could always point to farfegnugen [sic] as a way to sell a good car for a great price. So since he thinks about these things anyway, and because the U.S. automobile industry is on the skids and begging for help this week, I find myself wondering what would happen if Steve Jobs were put in charge of any of the Big Three car companies,” Robert X. Cringely writes for PBS.
MacDailyNews Take: One of Jobs’ competitors would be out of business within a year and the other would be several times larger, copying everything Job’s company did while pretending to “innovate,” and, as people woke up and realized what was going on, Jobs’ company would be gaining share at the derivative company’s expense with ever-increasing speed?
Cringely continues, “It wouldn’t be boring, that’s for sure, and I’m fairly certain Steve could do a better job than the Detroit executives currently in charge.”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
This is as good a time as any to trot out the old (updated) chestnut :
If Microsoft Built Cars…
1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you’d have to buy a new car.
2. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, and you’d have to restart it. For some strange reason, you’d just accept this, restart and drive on.
3. Your car would inexplicably get slower over time and, every 3-6 months, it would simply grind to halt and fail to restart. At this point, you’d have to reinstall the engine. For some strange reason, you’d just accept this too.
4. Apple would make a car that was powered by the sun, was three times more reliable, fast, and easy to drive–but most people wouldn’t know it or believe it.
5. Apple car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.
6. Microsoft would replace the oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights with a single “General Car Fault” warning light.
7. People would get excited about the “new” features in Microsoft cars, not knowing that they had been available in Apple’s cars for many years.
8. Microsoft cars would come with 5-year-old Apple car paint jobs, but they’d be the same crappy Microsoft car underneath.
9. If you were involved in a crash, you’d have no idea what happened.
10. Before deploying, the airbag system would ask “Cancel or Allow?”
What the US auto industry needs is a scorched earth policy. The inefficient, bloated and incompetent dinosaurs need to meet their Yucatan so that a new generation of American visionaries (like Steve) can revive the domestic auto industry and respond to something called the ‘consumer’ (big leap, eh?).
Steve could probably found his own venture capital firm for that very reason…
USA car manufacturers can NOT survive.
They have huge debts, even huger pension scheme liabilities, and absolutely no idea how to make a decent car.
Cars, like most things, arent really designed for function. They are designed for fantasy, and the Detroit fantasy of large lumps of metal with giant inefficient engines isnt turning anyone on any more.
In fairness, the Japanese and Germans arent that much better, but then you dont have to be much to beat Detroit.
A ‘real’ car would be a simple small model with a small battery engine and maybe a gas engine backup.
It would come in flat primer so you could paint it yourself, and would have an optional trailer if you needed to move anything.
Because it would be functional, there would be no air conditioning, no air bags, no radio, no sunroof, etc.
Dont like my ‘real’ car?
You are living in a fantasy world created by idiot marketing people and TV ads.
@Derek in Milan
That’s the car philosophy used in Africa, India and Asia for the most part. They are quite happy with a bland windowless van that gets the family from A to B in one piece. Styling, A/C and so on are hardly considered.
However, due to the mass of vehicles in the West, car companies decided to differentiate their offerings through ‘vanity choices’ and inadvertently fostered a culture motivated by those very needs, amongst other things. You could call it the curse of abundance perhaps?
This coming recession will probably cut a swathe of devastation through the very superficial culture we Westerners live in, in any event, and the Big Three will sadly be gorging on taxpayer money than admitting to its mistakes.
My dream…..an iCar.
Just make it AWD please.
Detroit seems clueless as to how to market cars that appeal to anyone with an IQ above that of a warm glass of water or those who will not buy anything else. Ford and GM make fine cars outside the US, sometimes sharing design & components with the US product, yet they always seem to eff it up for the US market.
Largely the problem is not that of labor- the problem is in the executive suite. Let me give a prime example:
Toyota took GM’s worst quality, most labor troublesome US plant, in California to manage. Using the same plant, same workers, same machine tools and different management & design (a slightly restyled Corolla) and it quickly became the highest quality, most productive and least troubled workforce plant in the GM system. It was called NUMMI and after the joint agreement, Toyota took over the plant, which still makes Toyotas to this day.
Note that this change happened with only two differences- design and management. Not the workers, plant or tools the workers used. This is not the only such example. The problem with the US Auto industry is not blue collar assembly line workers- it’s the white collar managers, supervisors and executives.
This project (NUMMI) was extensively studied and compared with all other US and foreign plants by a group at MIT. The study group published a number of books on the subject over many years. It’s a pretty damning indictment of US management and business practices.
Let’s put it this way. If Steve admires German design and engineering, since he owns a Mercedes, and since Mercedes has already owned and run a US automaker and failed, I hardly see how Steve is going to do better. I owned a Mercedes and was considering a Chrysler Crossfire, as it was a much cheaper version of a Mercedes SLK, but clearly there were not enough customers like myself to make Chrysler viable.
Now, the fact is, there’s too much capacity in the US and the world. Trying to keep all of these car companies alive, will only turn out to be much like the airline industry; all of them are sick and on life support.
The solution is to let Chrysler die, perhaps a couple products would get picked up by others, like the Dodge Ram truck, and the Jeep division, and the Viper. This would reduce capacity in the industry, and allow the other survivors to gain more sales, and thus profits. Two healthier domestic automakers are better than three sick ones. Force Ford and GM to rationalize their product lines, and allow the US govt to invest in equity thus giving taxpayers an upside when the automakers recover.
The last part of the solution is to set gas prices at a fixed price every 6 months, allowing consumers and mfrs to plan ahead, knowing what the future costs are. Right now, the price of gas should be set at $4. This means that the gov’t would get over $2 a gal in taxes, which they could put to assistance for the poor, or unemployed, or to help pay for the deficit, etc. When the gas price in the marketplace fluctuates too much, no one can plan effectively. People who were planning windfarms, 6 months ago, are no longer viable economically with $2 gas. With $4 gas now and going forward, these kind of large investment projects can be done knowing that they won’t be financially undermined by fast moving prices. Also, keeping gas prices high will create an incentive for carmakers to build those efficient cars that people want. With $2 gas, haven’t you noticed everyone bringing out their gas-guzzling SUVs over the holidays?
The cars would run snappier.
Remember that one of the things Steve did when he came back to Apple was shut down all the factories and outsourced it to China.
Dear american car companies, the answer is quite simple:
1) Make better small and cleaner cars and less big dirty ones.
Wrong! First, people like the big cars and SUVs. The cars are very clean already.
2) Stop believing that everything is god given to you alone and that some miracle will clean your pollution. No way that humans can keap on doing anything with this world as it was done these last years.
Wrong again. We can and will keep doing these things until a better alternative emerges. The auto industry has made cleaner more efficient cars.
3) Swallow your unjustified pride and LEARN something from the others.
Toyota is down more than Ford, so what can they learn? Well, there is a couple things they can learn. Drop the rediculous Union nonsense, and fight against the government when they try to force you to build cars that are too expensive to build and nobody wants..
Steve would be stupid to ride one of the actual windows-like american car products!
I own two American cars, one is a 2002 and one is a 2008. Neither car has ever been in for repairs (except for a break job on the 2002) and both have been virtually flawless.
“A ‘real’ car would be a simple small model with a small battery engine and maybe a gas engine backup.
It would come in flat primer so you could paint it yourself, and would have an optional trailer if you needed to move anything.
Because it would be functional, there would be no air conditioning, no air bags, no radio, no sunroof, etc.”
If you think that is a good idea and would work (and I don’t), then go and do it. If you believe in it, act on it. THAT is the American spirit!
OH GOODY!!
Maybe Steve can give us a gay $40,000 Chevy subcompact, complete with a sealed-shut hood and one-button dash.
Folks, the best thing the U.S. automakers could do is file bankruptcy (notice I did NOT say “go out of business”).
A bankruptcy filing would significantly ease the process of correcting their biggest problems: inept management, penny-pinch engineering, too many brands, too many dealerships, and the infamous “legacy costs”.
Any kind of bailout will just delay the inevitable.
re: “Almost 50% of the cost for the car goes to pay the Board of directors, 30% goes to pay inefficient ways to produce and bad R&D;, and only 20% is for material, logistics, payroll (of the employees that actually produce the car) and advertisement.”
Where exactly did you get those numbers? Not defending the auto companies at all, but are you out of your mind??????????
This is the first time I am heard about Microsoft built cars.I really wonder on reading it. I always believe that the car which introduce by American company would have advanced technology in every operation.
http://www.attorneysNC.com
“Maybe Steve can give us a gay $40,000 Chevy subcompact, complete with a sealed-shut hood and one-button dash.”
It would also top out at 30mph and require a new road network to run on.
The Apple cars somehow prevent users from making upgrades. No low-profile tires, wheels with rims that turn when the car is not moving, and hanging mirror ornaments allowed. Making such upgrades disable the car’s engine until removed.
Only four models available: Compact economy, compact sporty, mid-size basic, and large luxury. Truck lines and SUVs are cancelled. All models initially come in bright white only. The following year, black becomes available as an extra cost option. Then, without warning, paint is eliminated and all the car bodies are cut from a single block of aluminum.