Hacker News Reader

Comment by mox1 | Hacker News Reader

100% disagree. Manufacturing is hard, ask everyone who has done a physical product kick-starter.

Giving X people mac books and asking them to write a "Clone of X Tech Startup" is not that hard, just potentially time consuming.

Now, Ford may USE technology to improve their manufacturing and core product (a transportation device). They may become an ultra high-tech manufacturer (if they aren't already)..., but they will not magically become Google or Apple.

View on HN

It's not like they are going to suddenly lose their ability to manufacture products. The key is that their differentiation and survival will depend more on software and soft systems (such as bus lines) than it does on manufacturing prowess (where they are all quite good at this point).

It's also worth noting that Apple makes some impressively complex (and profitable!) hardware.

Just because manufacturing is hard, doesn't mean you should stick to it. Cars are already a commodity, if Uber/Google/Apple manage to deprecate car ownership in favour of centralized fleets then being a car manufacturer will be a low margin cut-throat business.

Think about how much of the machinery (and profits) of the car business would get eaten. No more annual model updates, no more advertising, much smaller luxury market and so on.

In that world it makes sense to try and move up the stack to own your own destiny and capture profits.

Maybe they'll learn how to augment their current manufactured products by integrating in high-tech features. Imagine all of the negative reviews of something really basic: CarPlay-type UI between vehicles and smartphones. Most car manufacturers haven't even gotten that right, despite partnering with tech companies. If automakers learn the correct lessons from tech startups, maybe they'll be able to start getting those right.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com