通用汽车转型电动车，汽车业走向中国主导的未来

[SuHaiJack]

通用汽车转型电动车，汽车业走向中国主导的未来

KEITH BRADSHER2021-02-01 10:06:50通用汽车及其在中国柳州的合资伙伴生产的纯电动汽车。
SHANGHAI — The business of making cars has reached a critical juncture — and it looks as if China is in the driver’s seat.上海——汽车制造行业已到了一个关键时刻——而且看来中国处于统领地位。General Motors’ surprise announcement on Thursday that it aspires to eliminate gasoline and diesel cars from its fleet by 2035 and embrace electric cars follows a road map successfully drawn by Beijing. To get there, G.M., the Detroit stalwart and symbol of American industrial might, may have no choice but to embrace car and battery technologies in which Chinese companies play leading roles.通用汽车(General Motors)周四出人意料地宣布，希望在2035年之前停止生产汽油和柴油汽车，转向电动汽车，这与中国政府已成功制定的路线图相符。为了实现这一目标，作为底特律中坚力量和美国工业实力象征的通用汽车可能别无选择，只能接受由中国企业起主导作用的汽车和电池技术。Even when setting the time frame, G.M. seems to be matching Beijing’s speed. Just three months ago, Chinese policymakers ordered that most vehicles sold in China must be electric by 2035.即使在设定这个时间框架上，通用汽车似乎也与北京的速度保持了一致。就在三个月前，中国的政策制定者颁布命令，到2035年，在中国销售的大部分汽车必须是电动汽车。“When it comes to global automakers’ electric vehicle plans, all roads lead back to Beijing,” said Michael Dunne, a former president of G.M.’s Indonesia operations.“涉及全球汽车制造商的电动汽车计划时，条条大路通北京，”通用汽车的印度尼西亚业务前总裁迈克尔·邓恩(Michael Dunne)说。Precisely how G.M. will shift its industrial capacity isn’t entirely clear, and the company declined on Friday to comment on what influence Beijing’s policies may have had in its planning. It didn’t mention China in its announcement on Thursday.通用汽车究竟将如何转移其工业产能还不完全清楚，公司上周五拒绝评论北京的政策可能对其计划产生了什么影响，也没有在上周四的声明中提中国。It didn’t have to. China has the market clout and the steadiness of regulatory policy to influence automotive decisions made from Detroit to Tokyo to Wolfsburg, Germany.它没必要提。中国拥有强大的市场影响力和稳定的监管政策，可影响从底特律到东京再到德国沃尔夫斯堡的汽车产业决策。China already is by far the world’s largest car market, accounting for a third of global sales. It is bigger than the American and Japanese auto markets combined. G.M. and Volkswagen both sell more cars through joint ventures in China than in their home markets.中国已是全球最大的汽车市场，占全球销量的三分之一。比美国和日本的加起来还大。通过在华合资企业，通用和大众汽车(Volkswagen)在这里的汽车销量都超过了本土市场。But China’s sway also extends to the business of making electric cars. Worried about its own pollution problems and keen to stay competitive in the technologies of the future, Beijing has long lavished subsidies on its electric car industry. During the global financial crisis a dozen years ago, China was already offering its taxi fleets and local government agencies up to $8,800 per car to choose electric models.但中国的影响力也延伸到电动汽车制造行业。由于担心国内的污染问题、渴望在未来的技术领域保持竞争力，中国政府长期以来一直为本国电动汽车行业提供大量补贴。早在十多年前的全球金融危机期间，中国就已向出租车公司和地方政府机构提供了每辆车高达8800美元的电动车购买补贴。Today, China is the leading maker of big battery packs for electric cars, producing considerably more than the rest of the world combined. Chinese regulations required until a year ago the use of Chinese battery suppliers, instead of their mostly Japanese and South Korean rivals, for electric cars sold with Chinese subsidies. That forced multinationals to place huge orders with CATL, the main Chinese producer.如今，中国是电动汽车大型电池组的重要生产国，产量远超世界其他国家的总和。直到一年前，中国的有关规定还要求，获得政府补贴的电动汽车必须使用中国电池供应商，而不是主要来自日本和韩国的竞争对手。这迫使跨国公司向中国的主要生产商宁德时代新能源科技公司（简称CATL）下了巨额订单。
位于中国合肥的蔚来电动车工厂。中国长期以来为电动汽车行业提供了大量补贴。
Chinese companies dominate the world’s production of electric motors. China has even gained control of much of the world’s production of key raw materials needed for electric cars, including lithium, cobalt and minerals known as rare earth metals.中国公司主导着世界电动机的生产。中国甚至已经控制了电动汽车所需的大部分关键原材料的生产，包括锂、钴和被称为稀土金属的矿物质。Major global automakers are already developing electric cars in China. Daimler and Toyota have jumped into extensive joint ventures with Chinese manufacturers to build electric cars. Ford Motor announced on Thursday that its new Ford Mustang Mach-E, the most head-turning car at the Beijing auto show last autumn, will be made in China as well as Mexico.全球主要汽车制造商已在中国研发电动汽车。戴姆勒(Daimler)和丰田(Toyota)都已与中国制造商成立了生产电动汽车的大规模合资企业。福特汽车(Ford Motor)上周四宣布，将在中国和墨西哥生产新款纯电动Mustang Mach-E，该车型在去年秋季的北京车展上最受关注。So far, no Chinese company has produced an electric car that can rival Tesla in capturing the world’s imagination, although one, NIO, is trying. But China has completed many of the steps along that road. Notably, Tesla began making vehicles in a factory in Shanghai a year ago.到目前为止，还没有一家中国公司生产出能与特斯拉(Tesla)匹敌、吸引全球想象力的电动汽车，尽管蔚来汽车(NIO)正在尝试。但中国已经完成了走上这条道路的许多步骤。值得注意的是，特斯拉一年前已开始在上海的一家工厂生产汽车。The world’s shift to electric cars “is based on the Chinese technological road map,” said Yunshi Wang, the director of the China Center for Energy and Transportation at the University of California, Davis.世界转向电动汽车“是基于中国的技术路线图”，加州大学戴维斯分校(University of California, Davis)中国交通能源中心主任王云石说。China is not trying to set global standards just for electric cars. It is also moving quickly to commercialize large numbers of self-driving cars, a technology developed in California. China is also trying to take the lead on how cars connect to the internet, through its planned nationwide deployment of 5G mobile communications.中国并不只是试图为电动汽车制定全球标准。它也在迅速将大量的自动驾驶汽车商业化，这是加州开发出来的一项技术。通过在全国范围内推出5G移动通信网络，中国还试图在如何将汽车接入互联网方面起带头作用。Chinese government mandates require widespread installation of these technologies by 2025. That has pushed Chinese and Western companies alike to adapt.中国政府要求在2025年之前普及这些技术。这促使中国和西方企业都开始采取行动。“From this we can see autonomous driving and intelligent connected vehicles are no longer a mere vision, they are a close reality,” Stephan Wöllenstein, the chief executive of Volkswagen China, said last week.“从这点上我们可以看到，自动驾驶和智能互联汽车不再是一个单纯的愿景，它们正在接近现实，”大众汽车集团中国区首席执行官冯思翰(Stephan Wöllenstein)上周说。G.M.’s Thursday announcement validates China’s long bet on electric cars. Just a few years ago, American carmakers were committed to gasoline engines. German automakers were pushing diesels. Japanese companies were emphasizing gasoline-electric hybrids.通用汽车上周四的宣布是对中国长期以来押注电动汽车的认可。就在几年前，美国的汽车制造商仍致力于汽油发动机。德国的汽车制造商仍在推销柴油车。日本的制造商当时强调的是油电混合动力车。China chose battery-powered electric cars. It announced in 2017 that it was phasing out fossil fuels for cars by a then-unspecified date. Many in the industry were skeptical.中国则选择了电池驱动的纯电动汽车。它在2017年宣布，将逐步淘汰化石燃料汽车，当时未明确日期。许多业内人士曾对此表示怀疑。Mary Barra, the chief executive of G.M., flew to Shanghai two weeks later and declared that while G.M. planned to put more electric cars on the road, the company believed that consumers, not governments, should decide when to stop buying gasoline- and diesel-powered models.两周后，通用汽车首席执行官玛丽·巴拉(Mary Barra)飞抵上海时宣布，尽管通用汽车计划推出更多型号的电动汽车，但公司认为，决定何时停止购买汽油和柴油驱动车型的应该是消费者，而不是政府。“I think it works best when, instead of mandating, customers are choosing the technology that meets their needs,” she said at the time.“我认为，最有效的做法是让客户选择满足他们需求的技术，而不是强制，”她当时说。China has taken a different approach. Given the cost and complexity of developing electric cars, the government has set big targets and offered the support to help its companies meet them.中国采取了不同的做法。考虑到开发纯电动汽车的成本和复杂性，政府制定了宏大的目标，并为帮助企业实现这些目标提供了支持。
位于江苏省泰州市的一家电池厂。为高性能汽车，比如特斯拉生产电池组的成本高达每辆1.2万美元。但电池的造价正在下降。
When it comes to the car industry, “the most important thing is what the government does,” said Liu Jing, a professor at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing.就汽车行业而言，“最重要的是政府做了什么，”北京长江商学院的刘劲教授说。The big obstacle right now to selling electric cars is cost.目前销售电动汽车的最大障碍是成本。Making the battery pack costs as little as $1,500 for the simplest Chinese-brand electric subcompacts, which are not really suitable for highway driving because of their slowness and modest range. But the cost is as much as $12,000 for a high-performance car, like a Tesla. Gasoline engines in each category of car size and performance typically cost less than half as much.为最简单的中国品牌微型电动车制造电池组的成本只要1500美元，但这种车因为速度慢、续航里程不够长，不适合在高速公路上行驶。为特斯拉这样高性能的汽车制造电池组的成本高达1.2万美元。大小和性能相同车型的汽油发动机的成本通常不到电动车的一半。Yet battery costs around the world are tumbling by nearly one-fifth each year. Chinese companies with lavish government backing have built immense battery factories deep in western China, notably in Qinghai Province, where much of the lithium for the batteries is mined. Mass production has yielded formidable economies of scale.不过，世界各地的电池成本正在以每年近20%的速度下降。中国企业在政府的大力支持下，在西部腹地建起了巨大的电池制造厂，尤其是青海省。用于电池的锂矿大多来自青海。大规模生产带来了让他人望而生畏的规模经济。China is also the world’s main producer of electric motors and a wide range of other electronics.中国也是世界上主要的电动机和其他各种电子产品的生产国。China’s drive for dominance in electric cars began in 2007. That was when Wen Jiabao, then China’s premier, unexpectedly selected a former Audi engineer, Wan Gang, to become the minister of science and technology. Mr. Wan, who had also served as president and as director of the Center of Automotive Engineering at Tongji University in Shanghai, was a passionate advocate of electric cars. He had strong support from China’s military and intelligence community, which had long seen the country’s oil imports as a strategic vulnerability.中国争取在电动汽车领域占主导地位的努力始于2007年。当时，担任中国总理的温家宝出人意料地任命前奥迪工程师万钢为科技部部长。万钢曾任上海同济大学校长和新能源汽车工程中心主任，他是电动汽车的热情倡导者。他得到了长期以来一直将中国的石油进口视为一个战略弱点的中国军方和情报部门的大力支持。
通用汽车首席执行官玛丽·T·巴拉在2018年。这家汽车制造商宣布，将在2035年后只出售零尾气排放的汽车。
In 2008, Mr. Wan’s first full year in office, China made only 2,100 electric cars. But production has soared since then, reaching 931,000 last year, according to LMC Automotive, a London data firm.2008年，也就是万钢上任后的第一个全年，中国只生产了2100辆电动汽车。但据伦敦数据公司LMC Automotive的统计，自那以后中国电动汽车产量飙升，去年达到了93.1万辆。China also got help from Western companies that were getting little support at home. G.M. agreed in 2011 to transfer battery technology and other electric car technology to a joint venture in China with the country’s largest state-owned automaker, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation.中国也得到了西方企业的帮助，这些企业在本国几乎得不到支持。通用汽车在2011年同意将电池技术和其他电动汽车技术转让给中国合资伙伴、中国最大的国有汽车制造商上海汽车工业集团公司。At the time, the Chinese government was putting heavy pressure on foreign automakers to transfer electric car technology to joint ventures in China. Such technology transfers — which foreign companies sometimes complain they are forced to make to gain access to the big Chinese market — have become a major issue between Washington and Beijing. The transfers were cited by officials under Donald J. Trump, the former president, as one reason for launching a trade war against China.当时，中国政府正对外国汽车制造商施加巨大压力，要求它们将电动汽车技术转让给在华合资伙伴。这种技术转让——外国公司有时抱怨它们为了进入巨大的中国市场被迫这样做——已成为华盛顿与北京的一个主要争议。前总统唐纳德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)手下的官员将这些转让列为对中国发动贸易战的原因之一。Now many Chinese companies are joining the electric car push. Zhejiang Geely, a Chinese carmaker, announced on Friday that it and Foxconn, the contract manufacturer of Apple iPhones and laptop computers in huge factories in China, were in talks to help Faraday Future in the United States make electric cars.现在，许多中国公司也加入到推动电动汽车发展的行列。中国汽车制造商浙江吉利上周五宣布，公司正在和富士康(Foxconn)就代工美国的法拉第未来(Faraday Future)电动汽车事宜进行谈判。富士康是在中国的大型工厂里为苹果(Apple)生产iPhone和笔记本电脑的代工制造商。By this autumn, said Mr. Liu of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, “you’re going to see a flood of electric vehicles all over the place, going into the market.”长江商学院的刘劲说，到今年秋天，“你到处都会看到大量的电动汽车进入市场。”Keith Bradsher是《纽约时报》上海分社社长，曾任香港分社社长、底特律分社社长。他之前曾驻华盛顿报道国际贸易新闻，后驻纽约报道美国经济和通信行业，还曾担任航空业记者。欢迎在Twitter上关注他 @KeithBradsher。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。

Source: 通用汽车转型电动车，汽车业走向中国主导的未来