Success breeds success and this adage certainly epitomises the Czech Republic, which hosts one of the highest concentrations of automotive-related manufacturing and design activity in the world. We already see early signs that the importance of private-car ownership is declining: in the United States, for example, the share of young people (16 to 24 years) who hold a driver’s license dropped from 76 percent in 2000 to 71 percent in 2013, while there has been over 30 percent annual growth in car-sharing members in North America and Germany over the last five years.
It’s fascinating to contemplate what opportunities Apple sees in the car industry, largely because they do have the resources to do almost anything they want, but also historically the restraint to avoid stumbling half-blind into an industry with notoriously difficult economics.
A restructuring of the industry is inevitably on the horizon, so rather than being swallowed up …