> They will need ultimately to make more profits than those companies combined, but the number of cars is not that important
That climbs pretty linearly with car sales. There's only so much margin you can make with a vehicle in any market. Apple manages to have higher profit at lower sales because selling a phone for $1000 that cost $200 is possible since millions of people can afford $1000.
Selling a $100k car that cost $20k is a much bigger margin than maybe Toyota has, but there are very few people who can afford $100k cars. Eventually you need volume. Apple itself has huge volume, they are outsold by around 20-30% against Samsung, not by 5000%.
Yes, automakers can push the "more car per car" thing. Luxury cars don't really cost that much more to make than low-end cars, and the profit margins are much better. But the market for high-price cars is limited, and there are too many companies in it already. The volume is in the low-priced cars.
That climbs pretty linearly with car sales. There's only so much margin you can make with a vehicle in any market. Apple manages to have higher profit at lower sales because selling a phone for $1000 that cost $200 is possible since millions of people can afford $1000.
Selling a $100k car that cost $20k is a much bigger margin than maybe Toyota has, but there are very few people who can afford $100k cars. Eventually you need volume. Apple itself has huge volume, they are outsold by around 20-30% against Samsung, not by 5000%.