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The High Cost of Success
成功的高成本
Even if Musk fails to turn Tesla into a mass-market carmaker, its profits in the luxury market and its many innovations may serve as the catalysts for an ecosystem of new transportationcompanies and initiatives that will go on to thrive and flesh out his vision for a worldwide conversion to electric vehicles.
即使马斯克不能使特斯拉成为面向大众市场的汽车制造商，其在奢侈品市场的利润和许多创新，还是可能催化新交通公司生态系统，并振兴充实电动汽车风靡全球的愿景。
“Thanks partly to Elon, the supply chain and consumer acceptance are maturing,” says Evelozcity’s Kindler. “Because of that, it’s a safe bet that electric cars are coming to the masses.”
“部分得益于伊隆·马斯克，供应链和消费者接受度趋于成熟，” Evelozcity公司的金德勒说道。“正因如此，电动汽车向大众普及是一个安全赌法。”
The rub, of course, is that the better things look for Tesla, or companies that pattern themselves after Tesla, the worse they look for the future of American manufacturing jobs. Musk has made clear he’s aiming to do away with workers. He’s publicly referred to his goal of turning Tesla’s factories into “a machine that builds machines,” adding that he’s going to keep piling on the automation until the assembly line looks like “an alien dreadnought.” He promised last year to speed up his production rate by a factor of 20—not by hiring but by doubling the number of robots in his factories to nearly 1,000. According to analysts, Tesla, on average, has already invested twice as much in robots per car produced than other car manufacturers.
当然，问题是特斯拉或那些效仿特斯拉的公司情况越好，美国制造业就业岗位的前景就越悲观。马斯克已经明确表示，他的目标是替代工人。他曾公开表示，他的目标是把特斯拉的工厂变成“一台制造机器的机器”，并补充说，他将继续推进自动化，直到装配线看起来像“一艘外星人的重炮战舰”。去年，他承诺将生产速度提高20倍——不是通过雇佣，而是通过将工厂里的机器人数量增加一倍，达到近1000台。分析师表示，平均而言，特斯拉在每辆汽车上投入的机器人数量是其它汽车制造商的两倍。
And the robots he’s buying are far more sophisticated than those you typically find in auto factories, which do the same simple action over and over again. Tesla’s bots can be programmed to perform a number of different, more complex tasks, even working together in groups as large as 15 on a single car. It is the first automaker ever to let robots handle final assembly of the cars, a complex set of tasks that is the last bastion of human labor in auto factories. Analysts have pointed out that at the assembly line speeds that Musk has said he’s shooting for, the presence of even a single human would be a hindrance, if not an outright hazard.
他购买的机器人远比你通常在汽车工厂看到的复杂得多，汽车工厂一遍又一遍地做着同样简单的动作。通过编程，特斯拉的机器人可以执行许多不同的、更复杂的任务，甚至可以在一辆汽车上以多达15个小组的规模一起工作。这是有史以来第一家允许机器人完成汽车总装的汽车制造商，而汽车总装是汽车工厂人类劳动的最后堡垒。分析人士指出，如果不考虑直接危害，要达到马斯克声称追求的生产线速度，即使一个人力都会成为阻碍。
So far, the effort to hyper-roboticize Tesla’s factories has been bumpy. Automation glitches are largely behind some of the big delays in Model 3 production. “Humans are underrated,” Musk said after failing to hit targets earlier this year. Which is not to say that there is any chance he will give up on his longer-range goal of eliminating workers. It’s no mystery why: Volkswagen has calculated that its robots work for less than $6 an hour, with all costs figured in, compared with $47 an hour in total costs for a human worker.
迄今为止，对特斯拉工厂进行超级机器人化的努力并不顺利。在Model 3的生产过程中，自动化故障在很大程度上是延迟的原因。“人类被低估了，”在今年早期未能完成目标后马斯克如是说道。但这并不是说他有可能放弃长期的裁员目标。原因并不神秘：大众汽车计算出，其机器人每小时的工作成本不到6美元，所有成本都计入在内，人类工人每小时的总成本为47美元。
If Musk succeeds in getting rid of humans in the car factory, he’ll likely be able to leverage that achievement, doing the same for the production of the semitrucks he’s starting to build, as well as for his already heavily automated battery, solar panel and space ventures (plus any future industry-killer companies that he has yet to dream up). And Tesla’s self-driving cars could mean the loss of another layer of employment opportunities: human drivers, a job currently held by roughly 3 percent of the American working population, including 3.5 million truck drivers.
如果马斯克成功用机器替代了汽车工厂里的人工，他很可能会同样运用于正开始建造的电动半挂卡车生产，还会运用于已经高度自动化的电池、太阳能电池板和太空冒险（以及其尚未构想出的任何未来“行业杀手”公司）。而特斯拉的自动驾驶汽车可能意味着另一层就业机会的丧失：人类司机，目前约有3%的美国工作人口从事这项工作，其中包括350万卡车司机。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
