Bob Lutz to Silicon Valley: 'You're Not That Smart'

In wonderful Bob Lutz fashion, the former General Motors head told entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley that making cars is hard.

“I think, like so many Silicon Valley techies, that they believe they are smarter than the world’s automobile business, and that they will do it better,” Lutz told The Associated Press. “No way.”

His argument, in a Readers Digest version: Cars are more dangerous than Walkmen and when you make things that can explode it costs money so beat it, nerds.

Tech giant Apple and Google have already waded into the automaking waters (although we’re not entirely sure how much Apple has yet) within the last five years.

Google’s approach will be to sell its technology to automakers, and probably not build the cars themselves, according to the report.

“We have enormous respect for the expertise of the automotive industry and how big and complex a job it is to manufacture a vehicle,” spokeswoman Courtney Hohne told the AP. “We’ll partner with many different companies to bring this technology into the world safely.”

Lutz told Fox Business last month that margins in the automaking business are much lower:

When it comes to actually making cars there is no reason to assume that Apple, with no experience, will suddenly do a better job than General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, or Hyundai. So I think this is going to be a gigantic money pit …

By the way the electric car market is still miniscule. That just doesn’t make sense.

According to the report, Apple CEO Tim Cook said at an event organized by the Wall Street Journal that the computer giant’s near-term plan for cars were infotainment devices meant to mimic its iPhones.

“What we really want, hopefully in the short term, is we’d like people as they enter their car to be able to have an iPhone experience in their car,” Cook said, according to the AP.