【王传福：领导比亚迪崛起的灵魂人物】


In late 2011 a fresh-faced Elon Musk could not contain a chuckle at the idea that Tesla could ever be challenged by Chinese carmaker BYD: “Have you seen their car?”

2011年底，对于中国汽车制造商比亚迪可能挑战特斯拉的想法，容光焕发的埃隆·马斯克忍不住发笑：“你见过他们的车吗？”

“I don’t think it is particularly attractive,” he explained on television then. “The technology is not very strong. And BYD, as a company, has pretty severe problems on their home turf.”

“我不认为它特别有吸引力，”他当时在电视上解释道。“其技术不是很强。而比亚迪作为一家公司，在本土市场也面临着相当严重的问题。”
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A decade on, the Shenzhen-based company led by Wang Chuanfu has claimed Tesla’s crown as the biggest producer of battery-powered cars. In the fourth quarter of 2023, BYD, which was founded in 1995 and counts Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway as a shareholder, sold a record 526,000 battery-only EVs to Tesla’s 484,000.

10年过去了，这家总部位于深圳、由王传福领导的公司已夺走特斯拉的桂冠，成为全球最大的电动汽车生产商。2023年第四季度，比亚迪销售了创纪录的52.6万辆纯电动汽车，而特斯拉销售48.4万辆。比亚迪成立于1995年，股东包括沃伦·巴菲特的伯克希尔哈撒韦公司。

“Four to five years ago no one would have thought that Chinese EVs would have the quality or reliability to compete,” said Tu Le, founder of Sino Auto Insights, a Beijing consultancy.

“四五年前，没有人会想到中国的电动汽车会具备竞争的质量或可靠性，”北京咨询公司中国汽车洞察创始人涂乐表示。

BYD’s ascent adds further glory to the rags-to-riches legend of Wang. The story of the professor in nonferrous metals research turned hard-headed executive with a fastidious focus on technology, supply chains and cost- cutting has become gospel in Chinese science and business schools.

比亚迪的崛起为王传福白手起家的传奇锦上添花。他曾是研究有色金属的教授，后来成为一位精明而注重实际的高管，对技术、供应链和成本削减极为关注，他的故事已成为中国科技界和商学院的信条。

To his employees, Wang is simply known as “The Chairman”. Both revered and feared, the 57-year-old billionaire’s unassuming demeanour belies a micromanager with a Stakhanovite work ethic.

员工们简单地称王传福为“董事长”。这位57岁的亿万富翁既受人尊敬又令人畏惧，他谦逊的举止掩盖了他是一位有着斯达汉诺夫式职业道德的微观管理者。
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“The work-life balance concept is just not in his lexicon,” said Michael Dunne, chief executive of Asia-focused car consultancy Dunne Insights.

专注于亚洲的汽车咨询公司Dunne Insights的首席执行官迈克尔·邓恩表示：“他的字典里根本没有工作与生活平衡的概念。”

In 2008, Charlie Munger convinced his business partner Buffett to invest $230mn for a 10 per cent stake in the then little-known Chinese company, arguing that in Wang they had a mix of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch, the former General Electric chief. Berkshire has since sold a 2 per cent stake for $890mn. Its remaining holding is worth about $2.3bn.

2008年，查理·芒格说服他的搭档巴菲特投资2.3亿美元，收购这家当时鲜为人知的中国公司的10%股份。芒格称，王传福是托马斯·爱迪生和通用电气前首席执行官杰克·韦尔奇的混合体。后来，伯克希尔以8.9亿美元的价格出售了2%的股份。其剩余持股价值约23亿美元。

BYD’s net profit more than doubled to Rmb21.37bn ($3bn) in the first nine months of 2023, compared with the same period a year earlier. Its share price has soared more than fivefold since the start of 2020, giving it a market capitalisation of Rmb622bn.

比亚迪2023年前9个月的净利润同比增长逾一倍，至213.7亿元人民币（合30亿美元）。自2020年初以来，其股价已飙升逾4倍，市值达到6220亿元人民币。

While Munger was impressed with Wang’s engineering skills, experts attribute BYD’s success largely to a ruthless culture of cost-cutting. The entrepreneur had instituted “absolutely aggressive cost control”, said Christoph Weber at Swiss software group AutoForm.

虽然王传福的工程技术给芒格留下了深刻的印象，但专家们将比亚迪的成功主要归因于其无情的成本削减文化。瑞士软件集团AutoForm的克里斯托弗·韦伯表示，这位企业家实行了“绝对激进的成本控制”。

Steeped in lessons from making mobile phone batteries and other components for Siemens, Nokia and Motorola in its early years, BYD has developed its own in-house capabilities. Contracting other companies for hardware or services is a last resort, so much so that an executive once told car reviewers the company made everything on the vehicle “except the tyres and the windscreen”.

比亚迪早年曾为西门子、诺基亚和摩托罗拉生产手机电池和其他零部件，吸取了大量经验教训，由此发展了自己的内部实力。只有万不得已该公司才会把硬件或服务承包给其他公司，以至于一位高管曾告诉汽车评论家，该公司制造了汽车的所有部件，“除了轮胎和挡风玻璃”。

The emphasis on cost has underpinned the group’s vertical integration, from supplies of resources to batteries and computer chips. As one of the world’s top battery makers it supplies rivals including Tesla and Toyota.

对成本的重视支撑了该集团从资源供应到电池和电脑芯片的垂直整合。作为世界最大电池制造商之一，它为特斯拉和丰田等竞争对手供应电池。

This has resulted in manufacturing innovations. In one example, in BYD’s early days, Wang acquired a panel-stamping tool from Jeep in Beijing. This led the company to crack “cell-to-body” technology, which sandwiches together the EV battery cell with a car body.

这推动了制造创新。举个例子，在比亚迪早期，王传福从北京的吉普那里购得了一款汽车覆盖件冲压模具。这促使该公司破解了“电池到车身”技术，将电动汽车电池与车身一体化。
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Wang’s unforgiving business model has led to complaints about worker treatment. By splitting manufacturing into “finer and finer steps”, Weber said, individual workers only carry out very narrow tasks. This means there is greater propensity to replace staff with cheap workers. “They basically treat people like robots,” he said.

王传福无情的商业模式导致了人们对工人待遇的抱怨。韦伯表示，通过将制造分成“越来越精细的步骤”，单个工人只能完成非常有限的任务。这意味着，该公司更倾向于用廉价劳动力取代现有员工。韦伯说：“他们基本上就像对待机器人一样对待人。”

Its battery-only vehicles have trumped Tesla in the fourth quarter, but taking into account plug-in hybrid vehicles — which China defines as “new energy vehicles” alongside pure battery- and hydrogen-powered models — BYD overtook Tesla in the first half of 2022. BYD’s total sales for 2023 were up 62 per cent to more than 3mn vehicles, compared with 1.81mn for Tesla.

去年第四季度，比亚迪的纯电动汽车销量超过了特斯拉，但若计入插电式混合动力汽车——中国将其与纯电动和氢动力汽车一起定义为“新能源汽车”——比亚迪在2022年上半年就超越了特斯拉。比亚迪2023年的总销量增长62%，至逾300万辆，而特斯拉的销量仅为181万辆。

In an era when China’s ruling .....st party frequently cracks down on the nation’s business elite, experts believe that Wang, a proponent of high-tech products that help achieve Beijing’s carbon emission reduction goals, is on relatively safe ground.

在中国频频整顿国内商界精英的时代，专家们认为，作为有助于实现中国政府碳减排目标的高科技产品的推动者，王传福的处境相对安全。
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In a rare endorsement, President *** in his annual new year address on Sunday noted that Chinese-made “new energy vehicles” showcased “China’s manufacturing prowess”.

中国在上周日发表的年度新年贺词中罕见地表达了支持，指出国产“新能源汽车……给中国制造增添了新亮色”。

BYD’s battery technology has for several years been taught as part of the curriculum at the elite Tsinghua University in Beijing. High school students now learn about the Tang, BYD’s plug-in hybrid SUV, as part of their physics lessons.

多年来，比亚迪的电池技术一直是北京精英学府清华大学课程的一部分。现在，高中生们也将比亚迪的插电式混合动力SUV“唐”作为物理课的一部分来学习。

Despite Musk’s earlier derision, BYD has been on some car executives’ radar for a few years. In 2021, then-Volkswagen chief Herbert Diess told the Financial Times that the Chinese group was the company the German automaker feared most.

尽管马斯克早年曾嘲笑过比亚迪，但几年前比亚迪就已经进入一些汽车企业高管的视线之中了。2021年，时任大众首席执行官赫伯特·迪斯告诉英国《金融时报》，这家德国汽车制造商最害怕的就是比亚迪。
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Yet BYD’s recent rise has surprised many in the industry. This is partly because growth accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic, when China’s borders were shut.

不过，比亚迪最近的崛起令许多业内人士感到意外。部分原因是，在中国关闭边境的新冠疫情期间，该公司增长加速了。

It was Musk’s own decision in late 2022 to chase higher volume in China through price cuts that gave BYD a recent boost. “If I’m shopping on value, BYD has got five models that are cheaper [than Tesla]. And they’re newer,” said Bill Russo, former head of Chrysler in China and founder of advisory firm Automobility.

正是马斯克自己在2022年底决定通过降价来提高在华销量，才给比亚迪带来了最近的提振。克莱斯勒前中国区总裁、咨询公司Automobility创始人罗威说：“如果我想要物有所值，比亚迪有5款车型（比特斯拉）便宜，而且它们更新潮。”

Having conquered the Chinese market, Wang is now setting his sights on foreign shores. In November BYD management told Citigroup analysts they aimed for a market share of about 10 per cent in overseas markets excluding the US or Europe in the long term. That implies annual overseas sales — outside of two crucial western markets — of 2mn-3mn cars, up from about 240,000 this year, according to Citigroup.

在征服中国市场之后，王传福现在将目光投向了海外。去年11月，比亚迪管理层向花旗集团分析师表示，他们的长期目标是在除美国和欧洲以外的海外市场占据约10%的份额。花旗集团的数据显示，这意味着除两个关键西方市场之外的海外年销量要从今年的约24万辆增至200万至300万辆。

Meanwhile, the group’s prospects in the US and Europe remain uncertain. In Brussels, fears of a wave of Chinese-made cars have led the European commission to probe Beijing’s industrial support as well as boost its own local subsidies.

与此同时，该集团在美国和欧洲的前景仍不明朗。在布鲁塞尔，对中国制造汽车浪潮的担忧已促使欧盟委员会对中国政府的产业支持展开调查，并提高了欧盟自身的本土补贴。

Anti-China sentiment in Washington has percolated into the minds of US consumers. While Chinese carmakers are not barred from selling vehicles in the US, they face a 25 per cent tariff and cannot receive EV subsidies available to other manufacturers through the Inflation Reduction Act, which excludes “foreign entities of concern”, which includes China.

华盛顿的反华情绪已渗透到美国消费者心中。尽管中国汽车制造商未被禁止在美销售汽车，但要面临25%的关税，而且无法获得《降低通胀法》提供给其他制造商的电动汽车补贴，该法排除了“受关注的外国实体”，这其中包括中国实体。

Chinese carmakers need to find a way into North America, the world’s second-largest car market, if they want to maintain growth keep Chinese factories filled, Dunne said. They “really genuinely need the access”, he said. “They understand that doing that by sitting back in China is not an option.”

邓恩表示，如果中国汽车制造商想要保持增长、充分利用中国工厂产能，就需要找到进入全球第二大汽车市场北美的途径。他说，他们“真真切切需要这种渠道”。“他们明白，固守在中国是做不到这一点的。”
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


However, Chinese car companies including BYD are mostly unproven outside of their home market. “Their business model is contingent on state subsidies,” said Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China and now a partner at Dentons Global Advisors.

然而，包括比亚迪在内的中国汽车企业在本土市场之外大多尚未得到检验。“他们的商业模式取决于国家补贴。”前墨西哥驻华大使、现任Dentons Global Advisors合伙人的豪尔赫·瓜哈尔多说。

A big test of this would be the company’s plans to build its first European car factory in Hungary.

一个巨大的考验就是该公司计划在匈牙利建立的欧洲第一家汽车厂。

“State subsidies are usually also contingent on them producing locally . . . you lose all those advantages once you take the operation outside of China,” Guajardo said.

“国家补贴通常也取决于它们是否在本土生产……一旦你把业务移出中国，你就失去了所有这些优势。”瓜哈尔多说。

Experts also point out that Tesla remains a formidable competitor in a fast-growing global market. The US carmaker reported fourth-quarter sales beating analyst forecasts and $7bn in net profit for the first nine months of last year. Its market capitalisation stands at $754bn.

专家还指出，在快速增长的全球市场上，特斯拉仍然是一个可怕的竞争对手。这家美国汽车制造商公布，去年第四季度销量超出分析师预期，前9个月实现净利润70亿美元。其市值为7540亿美元。

Instead, the question many are asking is whether any other EV makers can compete with the economies of scale boasted by Tesla and BYD. In China — the world’s biggest car market — BYD and Tesla soak up 43 per cent of electric vehicle sales.

实际上，许多人提出的问题是，是否有其他电动汽车制造商能够与特斯拉和比亚迪具备的规模经济竞争。在全球最大的汽车市场中国，比亚迪和特斯拉占据了电动汽车销量的43%。

“Tesla need not worry too much,” said Dunne. “Everyone else who builds cars should be gripped by panic.”

“特斯拉不必太担心，”邓恩说，“而所有其他制造汽车的人都应该感到恐慌。”
【中国企业将英伟达游戏芯片改用于人工智能】
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处



Chinese companies are resorting to chips repurposed from standard PC gaming products to develop artificial intelligence tools, after Washington blocked US exports of high-performance processors.Thousands of Nvidia gaming graphics cards are being stripped of their core components in factories and workshops every month, before being installed on new circuit boards, according to two factory managers and two chip buyers familiar with the situation.

华盛顿方面禁止美国出口高性能处理器后，中国企业正在用从标准个人电脑游戏显卡改变用途的芯片开发人工智能工具。
据熟悉情况的两名工厂经理和两名芯片买家透露，每个月都有数千张英伟达游戏显卡在工厂和车间被拆除核心部件，然后安装到新的电路板上。

Industry experts said the repurposing of chips from cards designed to be slotted into consumer PC motherboards to improve gaming graphics amounted to a rough workaround to tackle the lack of high-end processors in China.

行业专家表示，将原本设计用于消费类个人电脑主板、以改善游戏图像效果的显卡上的芯片改变用途，是解决中国高端处理器短缺问题的一种临时变通办法。
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While Nvidia’s gamer-focused products have raw computing power, they are not as capable in the high-precision calculations needed for training some large language models with bigger data sets. Due to the limits of interconnection speeds between chips, it is also challenging to overcome this by simply grouping more chips in computing clusters.

虽然英伟达的游戏芯片拥有强大的计算能力，但在训练一些具有更大数据集的大型语言模型所需的高精度计算方面，这类芯片的能力就不尽如人意了。由于芯片间互联速度的限制，简单地将更多芯片组合成计算集群来克服这一问题也很有难度。

“This is a desperate move by Chinese companies under the export controls. Just like using a kitchen knife to create artwork, it’s doable, but the effect is suboptimal,” said Charlie Chai, an analyst at research group 86Research.

研究集团86Research分析师Charlie Chai说：“这是中国企业在美国出口管制下的无奈之举。就像用菜刀制作艺术品，虽然可行，但效果并不理想。”

The Biden administration tightened export controls for cutting-edge AI chips in October, making it more difficult for chip companies such as Nvidia to sell high-performance semiconductors to China.

去年10月，拜登政府收紧了尖端人工智能芯片的出口管制，使得英伟达等芯片企业更难向中国销售高性能半导体。

Demand for the graphics processing units sourced from the gaming cards has surged in the past month, according to people familiar with the situation. One of the factory managers said workers had disassembled more than 4,000 Nvidia gaming cards in December, more than four times the number in November.

据知情人士透露，过去一个月对从游戏显卡上拆下来的图形处理单元的需求激增。其中一位工厂经理表示，去年12月工人们拆解了逾4000张英伟达游戏显卡，是11月份的逾四倍。

Customers for the repurposed components have been mainly public enterprises and small AI labs, which had not stockpiled enough Nvidia server chips before the new US export controls took effect, according to the two factory managers.

上述两位工厂经理表示，这些改变用途的芯片的客户主要是公共企业和小型人工智能实验室，它们在美国新的出口管制生效之前没有储备足够的英伟达服务器芯片。

They declined to reveal more details about their clients due to the sensitivity of the issue.

由于问题的敏感性，他们拒绝透露有关客户的更多细节。

However, industry experts and analysts warned that modifications to Nvidia’s products violated the company’s intellectual property rights, while some of the gaming cards could be banned from being sold to China at any time.

然而，行业专家和分析师警告称，改造英伟达的产品侵犯了该公司的知识产权，其中部分游戏显卡可能随时被禁止销往中国。

Nvidia’s most powerful gaming graphics board, the GeForce RTX 4090, was one of the most popular models to be repurposed, but it has now been blocked from being sold to China, the company said.

英伟达最强大的游戏显卡GeForce RTX 4090是改用中最受欢迎的型号，但该公司表示，其已被禁止销往中国。

To comply with the latest controls, Nvidia came out with a slower version of the banned cards last month, called the GeForce RTX 4090 D, which is 5 per cent slower than versions sold outside China, according to the company.

该公司表示，为了遵守最新管制措施，英伟达上月推出了一款与被禁型号相比运行速度较慢的版本，名为GeForce RTX 4090 D，运行速度比在中国以外地区销售的显卡慢5%。

One of the factory managers said the performance gap between the modified versions of the 4090 D and 4090 would be “more significant”, which could mean the slower version was not powerful enough for large language model training. The manager said a batch had been procured for further verification.

其中一位工厂经理表示，改造版4090 D和4090之间的性能差距将“更加显著”，这可能意味着较慢版本的性能不足以进行大型语言模型训练。这位经理表示，已经采购了一批4090 D用于进一步验证。

Nvidia told the Financial Times that “disassembling gaming cards is not a viable way to create data centre compute clusters for AI”, adding that gaming products were “designed, manufactured, and marketed for individual gamers and consumers”.

英伟达向英国《金融时报》表示，“拆解游戏显卡不是为人工智能创建数据中心计算集群的可行方式”，并补充称，游戏显卡是“为个人游戏玩家和消费者设计、制造和销售的”。

Nvidia has developed three chips tailored for China that meet the region’s growing demand for AI systems while complying with US export controls, enabling the company to maintain its foothold in one of its most important markets.

英伟达为中国量身定制了三款既满足其对人工智能系统日益增长的需求，又符合美国出口管制的芯片，使该公司能够在中国这个对其最重要的市场之一保有立足之地。

However, the performance of these chips is substantially weaker than those previously sold in China, and they will not be widely available until March, according to three people familiar with the situation.

然而，三位知情人士表示，这三款芯片的性能明显弱于之前在中国销售的芯片，而且要到3月份才能广泛上市。

Chinese customers have also obxted to the prices Nvidia hopes to set for these inferior processors, which are close to those of their more powerful banned counterparts, the three people said.

这三位人士表示，中国客户也反对英伟达对这些较低性能处理器的期望定价——与功能更强大的被禁处理器价格接近。

However, the options for migrating to China’s alternative chip ecosystem under development are limited, leading some companies to turn to Nvidia’s less expensive gaming chips.

不过，转移到中国正在开发的替代芯片生态系统的选择有限，导致一些公司转向英伟达价格更低的游戏芯片。
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“We don’t know whether such a reinvention will be successful, but we hope that these machines will be usable, at least in the short term,” said a buyer.

一位买家说：“我们不知道这种改造能否成功，但我们希望这些机器至少短期内能用。”