10 THE REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR

10 电动车的复仇：毫不妥协换来最好的时机

Model S打败了包括保时捷、宝马、雷克萨斯、斯巴鲁等在内的11家劲敌，并被杂志称为“美国仍然具有伟大创造力的有力证明”。《汽车族》将Model S评选为第一个获得此殊荣的非内燃机引擎车，赞扬它拥有赛车的驾驭感，驾驶体验堪比劳斯莱斯，握持体验比肩雪佛兰Equinox，节能性媲美丰田普锐斯。

THERE ARE SO MANY TELEVISION COMMERCIALS FOR CARS AND TRUCKS that it's easy to become immune to them and ignore what's taking place in the ads. That's okay. Because there's not really much of note happening. Carmakers looking to put a modicum of effort into their ads have been hawking the exact same things for decades: a car with a bit more room, a few extra miles per gallon, better handling, or an extra cup holder. Those that can't find anything interesting at all to tout about their cars turn to scantily clad women, men with British accents, and, when necessary, dancing mice in tuxedos to try and convince people that their products are better than the rest. Next time a car ad appears on your television, pause for a moment and really listen to what's being said. When you realize that the Volkswagen sign-and-drive “event” is code for “we're making the experience of buying a car slightly less miserable than usual,” you'll start to appreciate just how low the automotive industry has sunk.

当下，电视里铺天盖地的汽车和卡车商业广告，多到让人麻木，继而对广告里发生的一切视而不见。那些没有多少实质意义的广告内容，对其视而不见自然是可以理解的。厂商们指望着广告劝服消费者相信他们生产的汽车举世无双，可看看他们的广告——那些在广告上下了零星功夫的厂商几十年来反反复复只在吆喝着：空间更宽敞了，每加仑行使的公里数更多了，驾驶体验更好了或者多了一个杯座。而那些找不到任何有趣卖点的厂商干脆使用老掉牙的广告：衣着露骨的女人、操着英国腔的男人，甚至穿着燕尾服跳舞的老鼠。当你真的停下观看一下汽车广告，发现大众汽车“即签即卖”的销售策略已成为“让购车体验没那么受罪”的代名词时，你就会对汽车行业堕落之深有所感悟。

In the middle of 2012, Tesla Motors stunned its complacent peers in the automotive industry. It began shipping the Model S sedan. This all-electric luxury vehicle could go more than 300 miles on a single charge. It could reach 60 miles per hour in 4.2 seconds. It could seat seven people, if you used a couple of optional rear-facing seats in the back for kids. It also had two trunks. There was the standard one and then what Tesla calls a “frunk” up front, where the bulky engine would usually be. The Model S ran on an electric battery pack that makes up the base of the car and a watermelon-sized electric motor located between the rear tires. Getting rid of the engine and its din of clanging machinery also meant that the Model S ran silently. The Model S outclassed most other luxury sedans in terms of raw speed, mileage, handling, and storage space.

2012年中，特斯拉汽车的出现让行业里自鸣得意的同行大惊失色。特斯拉目前已开始发售Model S轿车。这辆全电力驱动的豪华座驾，每次充满电可跑300多英里，0~60英里每小时的加速仅需4.2秒。假如第二排加装后朝向的儿童座椅，它可以容纳7个人。车内有两个行李箱，一个是位于尾部的标准行李箱，还有一个被特斯拉称为前置行李箱，位于传统汽车发动机的位置。Model S有一个电池组置于车底盘上，在两个后轮之间还有一个西瓜大小的机电发动机，免去了发动机和其他机械的轰鸣声，让Model S跑起来的时候也很安静。在原始速度、里程数、操控感与内置空间等方面，Model S优于其他大部分豪华轿车，表现出众。

And there was more—like a cutesy thing with the door handles, which were flush with the car's body until the driver got close to the Model S. Then the silver handles would pop out, the driver would open the door and get in, and the handles would retract flush with the car's body again. Once inside, the driver encountered a seventeen-inch touch-screen that controlled the vast majority of the car's functions, be it raising the volume on the stereo* or opening the sunroof with a slide of the finger. Whereas most cars have a large dashboard to accommodate various displays and buttons and to protect people from the noise of the engine, the Model S offered up vast amounts of space. The Model S had an ever-present Internet connection, allowing the driver to stream music through the touch console and to display massive Google maps for navigation. The driver didn't need to turn a key or even push an ignition button to start the car. His weight in the seat coupled with a sensor in the key fob, which is shaped like a tiny Model S, was enough to activate the vehicle. Made of lightweight aluminum, the car achieved the highest safety rating in history. And it could be recharged for free at Tesla's stations lining highways across the United States and later around the world.

除了上述特性，特斯拉的门把手也有精巧设计。当人靠近车身时，银色的把手会自动弹出，车门打开。当人进入车内后，把手则会自动收缩，与车身融为一体。车内配有17英寸触摸屏，用于操控车内大多数功能，只需在触控板上轻轻一划，音量调节^[1]、天窗闭合等功能都可实现。传统汽车需要安装巨大的仪表盘才能容纳多个显示屏与按钮^{(部分用于降噪)}，而Model S则节省了大量的空间，使车内空间更宽敞。此外，Model S可实现随时随地接入互联网，驾驶员可以通过触屏听音乐或使用谷歌地图进行导航。与此同时，在启动车辆时，驾驶员无须转动钥匙，甚至无须按下点火按钮，驾驶座上的重力感应器与形似迷你版特斯拉的感应钥匙在做出识别后便可自动启动车辆。全车由轻质、高强度的铝合金制造而成，该车的安全系数也是历史上最高的。目前，Model S可在全美高速公路沿线的特斯拉充电站享受免费充电，根据特斯拉的计划，这些充电站将会遍布全球。

For both engineers and green-minded people, the Model S presented a model of efficiency. Traditional cars and hybrids have anywhere from hundreds to thousands of moving parts. The engine must perform constant, controlled explosions with pistons, crankshafts, oil filters, alternators, fans, distributors, valves, coils, and cylinders among the many pieces of machinery needed for the work. The oomph produced by the engine must then be passed through clutches, gears, and driveshafts to make the wheels turn, and then exhaust systems have to deal with the waste. Cars end up being about 10–20 percent efficient at turning the input of gasoline into the output of propulsion. Most of the energy (about 70 percent) is lost as heat in the engine, while the rest is lost through wind resistance, braking, and other mechanical functions. The Model S, by contrast, has about a dozen moving parts, with the battery pack sending energy instantly to a watermelon-sized motor that turns the wheels. The Model S ends up being about 60 percent efficient, losing most of the rest of its energy to heat. The sedan gets the equivalent of about 100 miles per gallon.*

无论是对于工程师还是普通大众来说，Model S都是效率的典范。传统汽车与混合动力汽车有数以千计的运动部件。发动机为了持续提供稳定的动力，需要曲轴、机油过滤器、交流发电机、风扇、分电盘、阀门、线圈和气缸等零部件配合。而发动机产生的动力，需要通过离合器传递到齿轮与传动轴来驱动车轮转动，这个过程中产生的废气需要由排气系统进行净化处理。在将汽油转化成推动力的过程中，普通内燃机车辆只能将燃料效能的10%~20%转化为动力。大部分能量^(约70%)以热辐射、对抗风阻、制动摩擦等其他机械功能耗散掉了。而Model S相反，它有一系列运动部件和电池组相互配合，可以持续不断地将能量输出给西瓜大小的发动机来驱动车辆，电能利用率可达60%，剩余能量大部分以热损耗的形式散掉了，Model S的性能相当于每加仑汽油可行驶100英里的传统汽车。^[2]

Yet another distinguishing characteristic of the Model S was the experience of buying and owning the car. You didn't go to a dealership and haggle with a pushy salesman. Tesla sold the Model S directly through its own stores and website. Typically, the stores were placed in high-end malls or affluent suburbs, not far from the Apple stores on which they were modeled. Customers would walk in and find a complete Model S in the middle of the shop and often an exposed version of the car's base near the back of the store to show off the battery pack and motor. There were massive touch-screens where people could calculate how much they might save on fuel costs by moving to an all-electric car, and where they could configure the look and add-ons for their future Model S. Once the configuration process was done, the customer could give the screen a big, forceful swipe and his Model S would theatrically appear on an even bigger screen in the center of the store. If you wanted to sit in the display model, a salesman would pull back a red velvet rope near the driver's-side door and let you enter the car. The salespeople were not compensated on commission and didn't have to try to talk you into buying a suite of extras. Whether you ultimately bought the car in the store or online, it was delivered in a concierge fashion. Tesla would bring it to your home, office, or anywhere else you wanted it. The company also offered customers the option of picking their cars up from the factory in Silicon Valley and treating their friends and family to a complimentary tour of the facility. In the months that followed the delivery, there were no oil changes or tune-ups to be dealt with because the Model S didn't need them. It had done away with so much of the mechanical dreck standard in an internal combustion vehicle. However, if something did go wrong with the car, Tesla would come pick it up and give the customer a loaner while it repaired the Model S.

与此同时，购买与持有特斯拉是另一种特别的体验。你不需要到经销商那儿与步步紧逼的销售员讨价还价。你可以直接通过特斯拉的官方网站与专卖店购买Model S。通常情况下，你能在富裕郊区或高档商场里找到特斯拉的专卖店，这些地点离苹果专卖店不远。^{(特斯拉的专卖店以苹果专卖店为设计灵感。)}顾客走进特斯拉专卖店，会看见一辆完整的Model S停在店中央。在专卖店的后部还有汽车底盘上的电池组与电机展示。店内装有大量的触摸屏，顾客可以在上面计算驾驶全电动汽车将节省的油费，也可以为自己心中理想的汽车配置不同的外观与配件。配置完毕后，顾客只需用力划过屏幕，刚刚配置的模型就会出现在店面中央一块更大的屏幕上。如果你想进展示汽车里坐一坐，推销员会向内拉动一根靠近驾驶座门的红色天鹅绒绳，车门开启，即可入座。这些销售员没有赚取销售佣金的压力，所以他们不会劝说你购买一套套的附加设备或服务。如果你最终决定购买Model S，无论在线上还是门店购买，Model S都将以礼宾服务的方式将车送到指定地点，例如家、办公室或是任何你指定的地点。公司还为顾客提供了其他的提车通道，你可以直接从硅谷的工厂提车。此外，你还会获得带着家人、朋友免费游览特斯拉工厂的机会。传统汽车在内燃机上安装了各种烦琐的标准机械，而Model S只保留了少数几个彼此配合的运动部件。所以在提车后的数月时间里，无须更换机油或调整任何部件，如果车子出现了问题，公司会上门提车送修，并在维修期间临时借给你一辆车。

The Model S also offered a way to fix issues in a manner that people had never before encountered with a mass-produced car. Some of the early owners complained about glitches like the door handles not popping out quite right or their windshield wipers operating at funky speeds. These were inexcusable flaws for such a costly vehicle, but Tesla typically moved with clever efficiency to address them. While the owner slept, Tesla's engineers tapped into the car via the Internet connection and downloaded software updates. When the customer took the car out for a spin in the morning and found it working right, he was left feeling as if magical elves had done the work. Tesla soon began showing off its software skills for jobs other than making up for mistakes. It put out a smartphone app that let people turn on their air-conditioning or heating from afar and to see where the car was parked on a map. Tesla also began installing software updates that imbued the Model S with new features. Overnight, the Model S sometimes got new traction controls for hilly and highway driving or could suddenly recharge much faster than before or possess a new range of voice controls. Tesla had transformed the car into a gadget—a device that actually got better after you bought it. As Craig Venter, one of the earliest Model S owners and the famed scientist who first decoded man's DNA, put it, “It changes everything about transportation. It's a computer on wheels.”

特斯拉Model S的售后服务完全不同于传统的汽车厂商。Model S早期车主曾抱怨一些小问题，比如门把手不能自如地弹出、雨刷运动速度异常等。这些小毛病对于如此昂贵的汽车而言是不可接受的，但特斯拉公司却用巧妙的方式加以应对——特斯拉的工程师们趁车主睡觉时，会通过网络连接到问题车辆进行软件更新。这样，当车主早晨醒来，开车出门发现车辆运行正常时，会不禁好奇是否曾有精灵驾到。如此一来，特斯拉在售后服务方面展现出的是软件技术而非弥补过失的能力。通过安装在手机上的特斯拉手机应用，车主可以远程控制车内空调或暖气，并能够在地图上查阅车辆的停放位置。特斯拉同时也会及时为Model S更新软件，增加新的功能。有可能一夜之间，Model S便会拥有在坡地行驶时的牵引力控制功能、充电速度变得更快，以及更强大的语音操控功能——特斯拉让你的汽车变成一种有趣的物件，是一种让你在购买后能持续升级的装置。正如Model S早期车主之一，也是第一个破译人类DNA^{(脱氧核糖核酸)}的科学家克雷格·文特尔^{(Craig Venter)}所说，“Model S改变了交通的一切。它是一台在轮子上运行的计算机。”

The first people to notice what Tesla had accomplished were the technophiles in Silicon Valley. The region is filled with early adopters willing to buy the latest gizmos and suffer through their bugs. Normally this habit applies to computing devices ranging from $100 to $2,000 in price. This time around, the early adopters proved willing not only to spend $100,000 on a product that might not work but also to trust their well-being to a start-up. Tesla needed this early boost of confidence and got it on a scale few expected. In the first couple of months after the Model S went on sale, you might see one or two per day on the streets of San Francisco and the surrounding cities. Then you started to see five to ten per day. Soon enough, the Model S seemed to feel like the most common car in Palo Alto and Mountain View, the two cities at the heart of Silicon Valley. The Model S emerged as the ultimate status symbol for wealthy technophiles, allowing them to show off, get a new gadget, and claim to be helping the environment at the same time. From Silicon Valley, the Model S phenomenon spread to Los Angeles, then all along the West Coast and then to Washington, D.C., and New York (although to a lesser degree).

第一批注意到特斯拉的人是硅谷的一群技术爱好者。硅谷这片土地聚集着一批新兴技术尝鲜者，他们热衷于购买各种最新的小玩意儿，并愿意忍受它们的种种不完美。通常来说，这股尝鲜劲儿会让他们在计算机设备上花费100~2 000美元。可他们并不愿意为一款并不一定能正常使用的产品支付10万美元，也不一定愿意将自身福祉托付于一家创业公司。但特斯拉在产品研发初期需要这种信心支持，并且他们真的得到了这样的支持。Model S开售的前几个月，你每天会在旧金山或周边城市的街上看到一两辆Model S。随后，你每天可以见到5~10辆车。没过几天，你会感觉特斯拉已经成为帕洛阿尔托或山景城这两个硅谷中心城市最常见的车型。Model S如今成了有钱的技术爱好者的身份象征。这辆最新潮的汽车让他们有所炫耀，也是他们声称为环保尽力的绝好证明。因此，从硅谷开始，Model S的热潮吹到了洛杉矶，席卷西海岸，也一路吹到了东岸的华盛顿和纽约^{(虽然东岸的普及程度没西岸那么高)}。

At first the more traditional automakers viewed the Model S as a gimmick and its surging sales as part of a fad. These sentiments, however, soon gave way to something more akin to panic. In November 2012, just a few months after it started shipping, the Model S was named Motor Trend's Car of the Year in the first unanimous vote that anyone at the magazine could remember. The Model S beat out eleven other vehicles from companies such as Porsche, BMW, Lexus, and Subaru and was heralded as “proof positive that America can still make great things.” Motor Trend celebrated the Model S as the first non–internal combustion engine car ever to win its top award and wrote that the vehicle handled like a sports car, drove as smoothly as a Rolls-Royce, held as much as a Chevy Equinox, and was more efficient than a Toyota Prius. Several months later, Consumer Reports gave the Model S its highest car rating in history—99 out of 100—while proclaiming that it was likely the best car ever built. It was at about this time that sales of the Model S started to soar alongside Tesla's share price and that General Motors, among other automakers, pulled together a team to study the Model S, Tesla, and the methods of Elon Musk.

起初，传统汽车制造商认为Model S只是个小儿科，它激增的销量也只是一时的狂潮^{(并没有把它放在眼里)}。然而，这种情绪很快就演变成了恐慌。2012年11月，也就是在特斯拉正式出货的数月后，Model S被《汽车族》^{(Motor Trend)}杂志列为“年度汽车”，这是该杂志第一次使用无记名投票方式评选而出的结果。Model S打败了包括保时捷、宝马、雷克萨斯、斯巴鲁等在内的11家劲敌，并被杂志称为“美国仍然具有伟大创造力的有力证明”。《汽车族》将Model S评选为第一个获得此殊荣的非内燃机引擎车，赞扬它拥有赛车的驾驭感，驾驶体验堪比劳斯莱斯，握持体验比肩雪佛兰Equinox，节能性媲美丰田普锐斯。数月后，《消费者调查》杂志出给Model S历史最高评分—99分^{(满分100分)}，称其为历史上最棒的车。自那时起，Model S的销量与股价一路冲高。与此同时，通用在内的其他汽车制造商也成立专门小组，研究Model S、特斯拉公司与埃隆·马斯克的创新方式。

It's worth pausing for a moment to meditate on what Tesla had accomplished. Musk had set out to make an electric car that did not suffer from any compromises. He did that. Then, using a form of entrepreneurial judo, he upended the decades of criticisms against electric cars. The Model S was not just the best electric car; it was best car, period, and the car people desired. America had not seen a successful car company since Chrysler emerged in 1925. Silicon Valley had done little of note in the automotive industry. Musk had never run a car factory before and was considered arrogant and amateurish by Detroit. Yet, one year after the Model S went on sale, Tesla had posted a profit, hit $562 million in quarterly revenue, raised its sales forecast, and become as valuable as Mazda Motor. Elon Musk had built the automotive equivalent of the iPhone. And car executives in Detroit, Japan, and Germany had only their crappy ads to watch as they pondered how such a thing had occurred.

特斯拉所获成就值得众人深思。马斯克一开始就下决心制造一款在任何方面都不妥协的电动汽车。他做到了，以一种企业家柔道策略，扭转了数十年来外界对电动汽车的批评。Model S不仅仅是最好的电动汽车，它就是最好的汽车、人们最渴望的汽车。自1925年克莱斯勒成立以来，美国就再没有出现过成功的汽车公司，硅谷在汽车产业上也投入甚少。在特斯拉以前，马斯克从没有运营汽车工厂的经验，SpaceX曾一度被底特律的汽车厂商认为既傲慢又业余。但是仅仅在Model S上市一年后，特斯拉公司就实现了盈利，1个季度赚取5.62亿美元，进一步刺激了销售预期，并达到了马自达汽车的市值水平。马斯克成功打造了汽车界的苹果手机。而底特律、日本与德国的汽车公司高管们只能一边望着各自公司蹩脚的广告哀叹，一边疑惑特斯拉为何会如此成功。

You can forgive the automotive industry veterans for being caught unawares. For years Tesla had looked like an utter disaster incapable of doing much of anything right. It took until early 2009 for Tesla to really hit its stride with the Roadster and work out the manufacturing issues behind the sports car. Just as the company tried to build some momentum around the Roadster, Musk sent out an e-mail to customers declaring a price hike. Where the car originally started around $92,000, it would now start at $109,000. In the e-mail, Musk said that four hundred customers who had already placed their orders for a Roadster but not yet received them would bear the brunt of the price change and need to cough up the extra cash. He tried to assuage Tesla's customer base by arguing that the company had no choice but to raise prices. The manufacturing costs for the Roadster had come in much higher than the company initially expected, and Tesla needed to prove that it could make the cars at a profit to bolster its chances of securing a large government loan that would be needed to build the Model S, which it vowed to deliver in 2011. “I firmly believe that the plan . . . strikes a reasonable compromise between being fair to early customers and ensuring the viability of Tesla, which is obviously in the best interests of all customers,” Musk wrote in the e-mail. “Mass market electric cars have been my goal from the beginning of Tesla. I don't want and I don't think the vast majority of Tesla customers want us to do anything to jeopardize that objective.” While some Tesla customers grumbled, Musk had largely read his customer base right. They would support just about anything he suggested.

但汽车届老兵对汽车业所发生的变革后知后觉也是情有可原的。因为在过去数年里，特斯拉看上去就是一家彻头彻尾的失败的公司，没做成一件事情。直到2009年，特斯拉才大展拳脚，推出了电动敞篷跑车Roadster，解决了跑车生产的系列难题。正当这家公司尝试利用Roadster乘胜追击之时，马斯克向全体消费者发了一封邮件，声明该车要涨价，从原先的9.2万美元上涨至10.9万美元。在这封电子邮件里，马斯克指出，那些已经预付定金但尚未拿到Roadster的用户会首先面临涨价。马斯克试图安慰消费者，表明公司当前没有其他选择，只能涨价——因为Roadster的生产成本远远高于公司一开始的预期，而特斯拉需要用Roadster实现盈利，以增大从政府获得大笔贷款的机会，这样一来，才能有资金用于生产Model S，并且他们已经承诺Model S将于2011年发货。“我认为，在早期消费者的公平性和维持特斯拉公司生存之间，这个计划做出了适当的权衡，这个方案也最符合消费者最佳利益，”马斯克在电子邮件中写道，“生产面向大众市场的电动汽车是我自建立特斯拉第一天开始就设立的目标。我不想做任何有损于这个目标的事情，并且我认为特斯拉的多数顾客也不会让我们这么做。”虽然有些特斯拉的消费者表示不满，但马斯克对大部分客户的解读是正确的，这些消费者会支持他做的决定。

Following the price increase, Tesla had a safety recall. It said that Lotus, the manufacturer of the Roadster's chassis, had failed to tighten a bolt properly on its assembly line. On the plus side, Tesla had only delivered about 345 Roadsters, which meant that it could fix the problem in a manageable fashion. On the downside, a safety recall was the last thing a car start-up needs, even if it was, as Tesla claimed, more of a proactive measure than anything else. The next year, Tesla had another voluntary recall. It had received a report of a power cable grinding against the body of the Roadster to the point that it caused a short circuit and some smoke. That time, Tesla brought 439 Roadsters in for a fix. Tesla did its best to put a positive spin on these issues, saying that it would make “house calls” to fix the Roadsters or pick up the cars and take them back to the factory. Ever since, Musk has tried to turn any snafu with a Tesla into an excuse to show off the company's attention to service and dedication to pleasing the customer. More often than not, the strategy has worked.

在涨价事件之后，特斯拉还进行了一次安全召回。原因是莲花汽车公司^(Lotus)在流水线上组装Roadster的底盘时未能将螺丝拧紧。好在特斯拉当时只发售了345辆Roadster，使得汽车召回与问题修复在可控范围之内。但坏处是，安全召回车辆其实是一家汽车创业公司最不想做的事情，即使特斯拉声称召回不过是一种积极应对可能问题的策略。就在召回事件的第二年，特斯拉又进行了新一轮召回，召回缘于一份报告。该报告称电线摩擦Roadster的车身，可能会引起车内电线短路并引发车辆冒烟。这一次特斯拉召回了439辆Roadster。特斯拉竭尽全力积极应对此事，表示特斯拉将派专人上门提取问题车辆再送回工厂检修。自此，马斯克尝试将每一次公关危机转化为展现公司无微不至售后服务的机会。而这一策略也每每奏效。

On top of the occasional issues with the Roadster, Tesla continued to suffer from public perception problems. In June 2009, Martin Eberhard sued Musk and went to town in the complaint detailing his ouster from the company. Eberhard accused Musk of libel, slander, and breach of contract. The charges painted Musk as a bully moneyman who had pushed the soulful inventor out of his own company. The lawsuit also accused Musk of trumping up his role in Tesla's founding. Musk responded in kind, issuing a blog post that detailed his take on Eberhard's foibles and taking umbrage at the suggestions that he was not a true founder of the company. A short while later, the two men settled and agreed to stop going at each other. “As co-founder of the company, Elon's contributions to Tesla have been extraordinary,” Eberhard said in a statement at the time. It must have been excruciating for Eberhard to agree to put that in writing and the very existence of that statement points to Musk's skills and tactics as a hard-line negotiator. The two men continue to despise each other today, although they must do so in private, as legally required. Eberhard, though, holds no long-standing grudge against Tesla. His shares in the company ended up becoming very valuable. He still drives his Roadster, and his wife got a Model S.

除了Roadster的几次偶然事件外，特斯拉也深受公共舆论带来的困扰。2009年6月，马丁·艾伯哈德控告马斯克，在一份诉状中详述了当年马斯克将他逐出公司的经历。艾伯哈德指控马斯克诽谤并违约。这份诉状将马斯克描述成将艾伯哈德这位尽心尽力的创始人赶出公司的一位盛气凌人的投资人，同时也指控马斯克捏造其在特斯拉创立时所发挥的作用。马斯克则写了一篇博客温和地做出回应，详细阐述了艾伯哈德的缺点，并对该指控声称他不是特斯拉的创始人深表不满。不久，两人达成和解，约定不再诋毁对方。艾伯哈德在一份公开声明中指出，“作为联合创始人，埃隆对公司做出了卓越贡献。”^{(让艾伯哈德白纸黑字地写下那份声明实在是勉为其难，而这份声明也彰显了马斯克强硬的谈判风格。)}时至今日，两人仍在私下互相蔑视，但艾伯哈德对特斯拉公司的积怨已消失，他持有的特斯拉股票现在已经非常值钱。艾伯哈德目前仍开着那辆Roadster，而他的夫人则开着一辆Model S。

For so much of its early existence, Tesla appeared in the news for the wrong reasons. There were people in the media and the automotive industry who viewed it as a gimmick. They seemed to delight in the soap opera–worthy spats between Musk and Eberhard and other disgruntled former employees. Far from being seen universally as a successful entrepreneur, Musk was viewed in some Silicon Valley circles as an abrasive blowhard who would get what he deserved when Tesla inevitably collapsed. The Roadster would make its way to the electric-car graveyard. Detroit would prove that it had a better handle on this whole car innovation thing than Silicon Valley. The natural order of the world would remain intact.

特斯拉刚成立的时候，其实是阴差阳错地卷入了新闻报道中。新闻界与汽车界视其为一家爱耍噱头的公司。他们也视马斯克与艾伯哈德及其他怨声载道的前特斯拉员工的争吵为肥皂剧，并对此津津乐道。在硅谷，马斯克未被当作举世闻名的成功企业家，甚至有不少人认为他是一位粗暴的吹牛大王。那些不看好他的人认为，特斯拉公司总有一天会崩溃，马斯克会得到应有的报应，Roadster也会走向电动车的坟墓，底特律会证明自己对于电动车的把控要强于硅谷。在他们看来这就是自然规律，而自然规律不可能改变。

A funny thing happened, however. Tesla did just enough to survive. From 2008 to 2012, Tesla sold about 2,500 Roadsters.* The car had accomplished what Musk had intended from the outset. It proved that electric cars could be fun to drive and that they could be objects of desire. With the Roadster, Tesla kept electric cars in the public's consciousness and did so under impossible circumstances, namely the collapse of the American automotive industry and the global financial markets. Whether Musk was a founder of Tesla in the purest sense of the word is irrelevant at this point. There would be no Tesla to talk about today were it not for Musk's money, marketing savvy, chicanery, engineering smarts, and indomitable spirit. Tesla was, in effect, willed into existence by Musk and reflects his personality as much as Intel, Microsoft, and Apple reflect the personalities of their founders. Marc Tarpenning, the other Tesla cofounder, said as much when he reflected on what Musk has meant to the company. “Elon pushed Tesla so much farther than we ever imagined,” he said.

然而，有意思的事情发生了。特斯拉安然渡过了这场危机。2008~2012年，特斯拉卖出了2 500辆Roadster，达到了马斯克最初想要达成的目标。^[3]它证明了驾驶电动汽车可以很有趣，电动车可以成为人们的梦想之物。通过Roadster，特斯拉使电动汽车进入了大众视野，而且是在美国汽车制造业与全球经济市场崩溃的背景之下实现的。至于马斯克是否是特斯拉真正意义上的创始人，此时已经无关紧要。如果没有马斯克的资金、销售技能、作为工程师的卓越能力、不屈服的精神与策略，那么今天是不会有特斯拉这家公司的。实际上，特斯拉的存在反映了马斯克个人的性格。正如英特尔、微软、苹果公司反映了各自创始人的个性一样。特斯拉另一位联合创始人马克·塔彭宁在评价马斯克对于特斯拉公司的意义时说道：“埃隆推动特斯拉取得的进展超乎我们的想象。”

As difficult as birthing the Roadster had been, the adventure had whetted Musk's appetite for what he could accomplish in the automotive industry with a clean slate. Tesla's next car—code-named WhiteStar—would not be an adapted version of another company's vehicle. It would be made from scratch and structured to take full advantage of what the electric-car technology offered. The battery pack in the Roadster, for example, had to be placed near the rear of the car because of constraints imposed by the Lotus Elise chassis. This was okay but not ideal due to the imposing weight of the batteries. With WhiteStar, which would become the Model S, Musk and Tesla's engineers knew from the start that they would place the 1,300-pound battery pack on the base of the car. This would give the vehicle a low center of gravity and excellent handling. It would also give the Model S what's known as a low polar moment of inertia, which relates to how a car resists turning. Ideally, you want heavy parts like the engine as close as possible to the car's center of gravity, which is why the engines of race cars tend to be near the middle of the vehicle. Traditional cars are a mess on this metric, with the bulky engine up front, passengers in the middle, and gasoline sloshing around the rear. In the case of the Model S, the bulk of the car's mass is very close to the center of gravity and this has positive follow-on effects to handling, performance, and safety.

孕育Roadster是个艰难的过程，但这个过程也极大地激励了马斯克，他想要从零开始在汽车制造领域打拼出一片天地。正如特斯拉的新一代产品——代号为“白星”^(WhiteStar)的电动汽车，“白星”不再基于任何公司制造的电动汽车进行升级改造，而是从零开始进行研发与设计，采用最前沿的电动汽车技术来打造。举个例子，在Roadster中，由于受到莲花汽车公司制造的底盘承重限制，电池要放置在车辆的尾部，这样的设计差强人意。而在“白星”^{(也就是Model S的前身)}的设计过程中，马斯克与特斯拉的工程师从一开始便知道他们将在底盘上安装重达4 300磅的电池。这样一来，车身的重心降低了，便会带来极致的驾驶体验。该设计同时也使Model S拥有低惯性力矩^{(low polar moment of inertia，可使车辆免于翻转)}。理想情况下，你希望引擎这类重型部件接近车子的重力中心。这也是为什么赛车的引擎会设计在接近车身中部的位置。传统汽车的设计——将笨重的引擎放在前面，乘客在中部，油箱在后面——很糟糕。对于Model S而言，车的重型零件非常接近重力中心，这样就能带来一系列优质的驾驶体验、汽车性能与较高的安全系数。

The innards, though, were just one part of what would make the Model S shine. Musk wanted to make a statement with the car's look as well. It would be a sedan, yes, but it would be a sexy sedan. It would also be comfortable and luxurious and have none of the compromises that Tesla had been forced to embrace with the Roadster. To bring such a beautiful, functional car to life, Musk hired Henrik Fisker, a Danish automobile designer renowned for his work at Aston Martin.

马斯克对Model S的要求当然不仅仅局限于内在美，他决意要让此座驾的外形工艺同样出人意表，一鸣惊人，让Model S成为所有轿车当中最性感撩人的一款。Model S不但要提供奢华和舒适的体验，还要在工艺上趋于完美，达到当时Roaster系列尚不能企及的高度。为了打造这款内外兼修的豪华座驾，马斯克特意聘请了丹麦知名汽车设计师亨利·菲斯克^{(Henrik Fisker)}，后者曾效力于阿斯顿·马丁汽车公司，从事汽车的外观设计并屡立战功。

Tesla first revealed its plans for the Model S to Fisker in 2007. It asked him to design a sleek, four-door sedan that would cost between $50,000 and $70,000. Tesla could still barely make Roadsters and had no idea if its all-electric powertrain would hold up over time. Musk, though, refused to wait and find out. He wanted the Model S to ship in late 2009 or early 2010 and needed Fisker to work fast. By reputation, Fisker had a flair for the dramatic and had produced some of the most stunning car designs over the past decade, not just for Aston Martin but also for special versions of BMW and Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

特斯拉早在2007年便向菲斯克提出建造Model S的计划，并让他设计一款造型优雅的4门轿车，平均造价在5万~7万美元之间。其实，当时特斯拉对Roadsters系列仍无甚把握，也无从得知其纯电动汽车动力系统能否经得起时间的考验。但马斯克雷厉风行的个性是无法忍受无谓等待的，他早已计划好让Model S系列在2009年年底到2010年年初开始发货，这样的生产日程要求初来乍到的设计师菲斯克马上投入高效工作。设计师菲斯克在业内颇负盛名，对这样高难度的挑战也并不陌生。菲斯克擅长富有戏剧性的外观设计，在过去的10年里让人惊艳的作品层出不穷，不单是阿斯顿·马丁汽车集团的宠儿，也曾被宝马和奔驰青睐，为其从事特殊限量版汽车的设计。

Fisker had a studio in Orange County, California, and Musk and other Tesla executives would meet there to go over his evolving takes on the Model S. Each visit was less inspiring than the last.

菲斯克在加州橘子郡有一个设计工作室，马斯克和其他特斯拉集团的高层常前往讨论Model S的设计方案。他们不断更改设计方案，但每一次都比前一次更差。

Fisker baffled the Tesla teams with his stodgy designs. “Some of the early styles were like a giant egg,” said Ron Lloyd, the former vice president of the WhiteStar project at Tesla. “They were terrible.” When Musk pushed back, Fisker blamed the physical constraints Tesla had put in place for the Model S as too restrictive. “He said they would not let him make the car sexy,” Lloyd said. Fisker tried a couple of different approaches and unveiled some foam models of the car for Musk and his crew to dissect. “We kept on telling him they were not right,” Lloyd said.

菲斯克交出的设计方案实在平庸臃肿，令人大跌眼镜，这一点让特斯拉员工大惑不解。特斯拉“白星”项目副总裁罗恩·洛伊德^{(Ron Lloyd)}回忆道，“一些早期的设计图看上去简直像个硕大的鸡蛋，糟糕透了。”马斯克将设计方案推翻，而菲斯克则把原因归结于Model S本身的结构，抱怨诸多结构限制导致他无法实现轻盈美观的设计。洛伊德说，“他说是特斯拉存心不让他设计出一款别致迷人的汽车。”菲斯克继而改变了几种不同的设计方式，交出一系列塑料模型让马斯克和他的团队研究解构，但一切努力皆无补于事。洛伊德说，“我们一再告诉他，这些都不是我们想要的。”

Not long after these meetings, Fisker started his own company—Fisker Automotive—and unveiled the Fisker Karma hybrid in 2008. This luxury sedan looked like a vehicle Batman might take out for a Sunday drive. With its elongated lines and sharp edges, the car was stunning and truly original. “It rapidly became clear that he was trying to compete with us,” Lloyd said. As Musk dug into the situation, he discovered that Fisker had been shopping his idea for a car company to investors around Silicon Valley for some time. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the more famous venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, once had a chance to invest in Tesla and then ended up putting money into Fisker instead.

大师如此有失水准的发挥一直让人费解，直到后来大家才惊觉，菲斯克可能在为自己谋后路，把一些最好的设计留给了自己。而事实证实了这样的猜测，菲斯克随即创立了菲斯克汽车集团，并在2008年推出了Fisker Karma混合动力汽车。这款奢华轿车看起来派头十足，假如蝙蝠侠要周末自驾出行，他想必也会选择这款座驾代步。菲斯克Karma系列的外观设计颇有独创之处，从舒展的线条到分明的棱角，每一处细节都吸引眼球。洛伊德说，“很快一切便昭然若揭，他在暗中和我们较劲。”马斯克对此事进行了深入调查，发现菲斯克早已秘密地全力推进其创业大计，到处游说硅谷投资者为菲斯克汽车筹集资金。菲斯克有可能因为分身乏术而怠慢了特斯拉的工作进度，或者他是在故意拖延特斯拉的发展，以便成就自己的创业野心。硅谷叱咤风云的风险投资大户凯鹏华盈^(KPCB)本来有意向投资特斯拉，后来却转而倾心菲斯克汽车。^[4]

All of this was too much for Musk, and he launched a lawsuit against Fisker in 2008, accusing him of stealing Tesla's ideas and using the $875,000 Tesla had paid for design work to help get his rival car company off the ground. (Fisker ultimately prevailed in the dispute with an arbitrator ordering Tesla to reimburse Fisker's legal fees and deeming Tesla's allegations baseless.)

马斯克终于忍无可忍，于2008年对菲斯克提出法律诉讼，控告后者偷窃特斯拉的创意，并指责其把特斯拉支付的87.5万美元用于竞争对手公司的前期开发。^{(菲斯克最终赢得了这场官司，法官认为特斯拉的指控毫无依据，判令特斯拉向菲斯克赔付诉讼费。)}

Tesla had thought about doing a hybrid like Fisker where a gas engine would be present to recharge the car's batteries after they had consumed an initial charge. The car would be able to travel fifty to eighty miles after being plugged into an outlet and then take advantage of ubiquitous gas stations as needed to top up the batteries, eliminating range anxiety. Tesla's engineers prototyped the hybrid vehicle and ran all sorts of cost and performance metrics. In the end, they found the hybrid to be too much of a compromise. “It would be expensive, and the performance would not be as good as the all-electric car,” said J. B. Straubel. “And we would have needed to build a team to compete with the core competency of every car company in the world. We would have been betting against all the things we believe in, like the power electronics and batteries improving. We decided to put all the effort into going where we think the endpoint is and to never look back.” After coming to this conclusion, Straubel and others inside Tesla started to let go of their anger toward Fisker. They figured he would end up delivering a kluge of a car and get what was coming to him.

特斯拉曾经考虑过像菲斯克一样制造混合型动力汽车，当电池电量耗尽时，汽车将发动汽油引擎为电池充电。此类混合型动力汽车充满电可行驶50~80英里，无处不在的加油站可以实现即时电池供电，从而消除了人们对电动汽车行驶距离方面的顾虑。经过建模、成本核算和性能指标分析，特斯拉的工程师们发现建造混合型动力车要付出高昂的代价。“这样一来，不但成本很高，而且性能远不及纯电动汽车，”J·B·斯特劳贝尔说，“我们还需要为此专门组建一支团队，去和全世界所有的汽车公司比拼传统机械工艺，这与我们一直坚持的电动力理念和电池优化之路背道而驰。我们决定义无反顾地全身心投入到我们所认定的最终愿景上。”J·B·斯特劳贝尔和特斯拉内部成员达成这样的共识之后，对菲斯克的怒火也减轻了不少，因为他们相信菲斯克这样投机取巧的做法难成大器，并将自食其果。

A large car company might spend $1 billion and need thousands of people to design a new vehicle and bring it to market. Tesla had nothing close to these resources as it gave birth to the Model S. According to Lloyd, Tesla initially aimed to make about ten thousand Model S sedans per year and had budgeted around $130 million to achieve this goal, including engineering the car and acquiring the manufacturing machines needed to stamp out the body parts. “One of the things Elon pushed hard with everyone was to do as much as possible in-house,” Lloyd said.

一个大型汽车企业投入常常动辄投入10亿美元，动用上千人手来开发和销售新车型，而特斯拉在创造Model S的时候却没有这样丰厚的资源。洛伊德表示，特斯拉初期目标是每年生产1万辆Model S轿车，预算为1.3亿美元，其中包括工程开销和车身制造器械的购置。“埃隆强调每个人都应尽可能地在内部解决生产设计问题。”

Tesla would make up for its lack of R&D money by hiring smart people who could outwork and outthink the third parties relied on by the rest of the automakers. “The mantra was that one great engineer will replace three medium ones,” Lloyd said.

特斯拉通过招聘绝顶聪明的员工来弥补研发资金上的短板，与绝大多数汽车公司依赖的第三方服务商相比，这些员工无论在敬业程度或聪明才智上都更胜一筹。洛伊德说：“我们相信，在工程师里面，一个佼佼者远胜于三个平庸之辈。”

A small team of Tesla engineers began the process of trying to figure out the mechanical inner workings of the Model S. Their first step in this journey took place at a Mercedes dealership where they test drove a CLS 4-Door Coupe and an E-Class sedan. The cars had the same chassis, and the Tesla engineers took measurements of every inch of the vehicles, studying what they liked and didn't like. In the end, they preferred the styling on the CLS and settled on it as their baseline for thinking about the Model S.

几个特斯拉工程师组成小分队开始探索和构思Model S内部机械结构，他们探索之旅的第一站便是当地的奔驰代理商。他们当场试驾了CLS系列4门跑车和E级轿车，这些车的共同点是使用相同的底盘。工程师们对每辆座驾的每一部分都进行了仔细测量和记录，并分析利弊，最后总结出CLS系列略胜一筹，并以此作为设计Model S的基准点。

After purchasing a CLS, Tesla's engineers tore it apart. One team had reshaped the boxy, rectangular battery pack from the Roadster and made it flat. The engineers cut the floor out of the CLS and plopped in the pack. Next they put the electronics that tied the whole system together in the trunk. After that, they replaced the interior of the car to restore its fit and finish. Following three months of work, Tesla had in effect built an all-electric Mercedes CLS. Tesla used the car to woo investors and future partners like Daimler that would eventually turn to Tesla for electric powertrains in their vehicles. Now and again, the Tesla team took the car out for drives on public roads. It weighed more than the Roadster but was still fast and had a range of about 120 miles per charge. To perform these joyrides-cum-tests in relative secrecy, the engineers had to weld the tips of the exhaust pipes back onto the car to make it look like any other CLS.

于是，工程师队伍购入了一辆奔驰CLS跑车，并把它完全拆解了。工程小组把Roadster原来四四方方的电池块改成了扁平状，切开CLS跑车的底盘，放入新版的电池块，接着他们把连接整个系统的电子线路放进车尾箱，然后将车的内部结构恢复原样，最终完工。三个月的辛勤劳动后，特斯拉有了第一辆勉强能称得上纯电动的汽车，可姑且称之为特斯拉版的电动奔驰CLS。特斯拉带着这辆车去笼络投资人和未来的合作伙伴，包括戴姆勒汽车制造商，谁也没料到此后不久，戴姆勒将会反过来向特斯拉购买电动动力系统。时至今日，特斯拉的员工仍常常把这辆改装电动车开到公路上试驾。尽管该车比Roadster重，但无损于速度与车程，每次充满电可行使120英里之远。为了在试驾兜风时掩人耳目，工程师们把排气管焊回了原位，让它看起来与一般的奔驰CLS无异。

It was at this time, the summer of 2008, when an artsy car lover named Franz von Holzhausen joined Tesla. His job would be to breathe new life into the car's early designs and, if possible, turn the Model S into an iconic product.*

2008年夏天，一位有艺术品位的汽车爱好者弗朗茨·冯·霍兹豪森加盟特斯拉。他当时承担着艰巨的任务，不但要处理菲斯克留下的烂摊子，还得尽可能地把Model S打造成一个具有跨时代意义的标志性产品。^[5]

Von Holzhausen grew up in a small Connecticut town. His father worked on the design and marketing of consumer products, and Franz treated the family basement full of markers, different kinds of paper, and other materials as a playground for his imagination. As he grew older, von Holzhausen drifted toward cars. He and a friend stripped down a dune-buggy motor one winter and then built it back up, and von Holzhausen always filled the margins of his school notebooks with drawings of cars and had pictures of cars on his bedroom walls.

冯·霍兹豪森在康涅狄格州的一个小镇长大，父亲从事消费品设计和市场推广工作。冯·霍兹豪森从小就把装满马克笔、纸张和各式材料的地下室当作创作乐园。年纪稍长的冯·霍兹豪森开始情迷汽车，笔记本留白处和寝室墙上均布满了汽车的草图和图片。一年冬天，他和一个朋友拆解并重装了一辆沙漠越野车的引擎。

Applying to college, von Holzhausen decided to follow his father's path and enrolled in the industrial design program at Syracuse University. Then, through a chance encounter with another designer during an internship, von Holzhausen heard about the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. “This guy had been teaching me about car design and this school in Los Angeles, and I got super-intrigued,” said von Holzhausen. “I went to Syracuse for two years and then decided to transfer out to California.”

申请大学的时候，冯·霍兹豪森决定追随父亲的脚步，申请了雪城大学工业设计系。在实习期间，冯·霍兹豪森偶然从同事口中得知洛杉矶的艺术中心设计学院有个不错的汽车设计项目。“这家伙不厌其烦地教我关于汽车设计的知识，并不断提到这所在洛杉矶的学校，我的兴趣马上就被激发了，”冯·霍兹豪森说，“我在雪城大学待了两年便决定转学到加州。”

The move to Los Angeles kicked off a long and storied design career in the automotive industry. Von Holzhausen would go on to intern in Michigan with Ford and in Europe with Volkswagen, where he began to pick up on a mix of design sensibilities. After graduating in 1992, he started work for Volkswagen on just about the most exciting project imaginable—a top-secret new version of the Beetle. “It really was a magical time,” von Holzhausen said. “Only fifty people in the world knew we were doing this project.” Von Holzhausen had a chance to work on the exterior and interior of the vehicle, including the signature flower vase built into the dashboard. In 1997, Volkswagen launched the “New Beetle,” and von Holzhausen saw firsthand how the look of the car captivated the public and changed the way people felt about Volkswagen, which had suffered from woeful sales in the United States. “It started a rebirth of the VW brand and brought design back into their mix,” he said.

从雪城搬到洛杉矶，标示着一段漫长曲折的设计师生涯的开端。冯·霍兹豪森先在密歇根州的福特汽车集团实习，之后又到欧洲的大众汽车公司工作，并学会了将各种设计理念融会贯通。1992年，他以应届毕业生的身份参与了大众汽车最激动人心的顶级机密项目，负责设计最新款的甲壳虫轿车。冯·霍兹豪森说，“这实在是段神奇的经历，全球只有50个人知道我们在做这个项目。”他当时参与汽车的外观和内部设计，包括那个标志性的仪表盘外嵌花瓶装置。1997年，大众汽车的新甲壳虫系列上市，冯·霍兹豪森见证了一辆汽车的外观的重要性，目睹了新甲壳虫系列如何牢牢吸引群众目光并帮助大众汽车扭转品牌形象^{(而此前不久，大众汽车在美国市场遇冷，销售情况堪忧)}。冯·霍兹豪森说：“这次成功意味着设计美学回归主导地位，也堪称大众汽车品牌的一次涅槃重生。”

Von Holzhausen spent eight years with VW, climbing the ranks of its design team and falling in love with the car culture of Southern California. Los Angeles has long adored its cars, with the climate lending itself to all manner of vehicles from convertibles to surfboard-toting vans. Almost all of the major carmakers set up design studios in the city. The presence of the studios allowed von Holzhausen to hop from VW to General Motors and Mazda, where he served as the company's director of design.

冯·霍兹豪森在大众汽车工作了8年之久，在设计之路上平步青云，并逐渐爱上了南加州浓厚的汽车文化。洛杉矶一直有汽车情结，而且宜人的气候让各式各样的车都可以派上用场，从敞篷跑车到顶置冲浪板的面包车，因此几乎所有大型汽车厂商都会在洛杉矶开设计工作室。正是因为有了这些设计工作室，冯·霍兹豪森才能随心所欲地为不同的汽车品牌工作，在大众汽车公司、通用汽车公司和马自达汽车公司都曾担任设计总监。

GM taught von Holzhausen just how nasty a big car company could become. None of the cars in GM's lineup really excited him, and it seemed near impossible to make a large impact on the company's culture. He was one member of a thousand-person design team that divvyed up the makes of cars haphazardly without any consideration as to which person really wanted to work on which car. “They took all the spirit out of me,” said von Holzhausen. “I knew I didn't want to die there.” Mazda, by contrast, needed and wanted help. It let von Holzhausen and his team in Los Angeles put their imprint on every car in the North American vehicle lineup and to produce a set of concept cars that reshaped how the company approached design. As von Holzhausen put it, “We brought the zoom-zoom back into the look and feel of the car.”

在通用汽车公司的工作经历让冯·霍兹豪森切身体会到大公司的繁文缛节，以及诸多的官僚制度弊端，当时没有一款将出炉的产品能提起他的兴趣，而且凭借他个人的力量也不太可能改变根深蒂固的企业文化。在通用汽车公司，他只是1 000名员工里面的普通一员，公司分配任务时也根本无暇顾及个人的偏好和特长，他只能被任意分配到某个车型团队。“我的灵感被这样的企业抽干了，我心里清楚自己不能在这里浪费生命了。”与此同时，马自达汽车公司却正求贤若渴，让冯·霍兹豪森和他的洛杉矶团队有机会大展身手，不但让他有机会亲自打造每一款北美汽车市场上的汽车，还为马自达生产了一些列先锋概念车，重新定义了马自达的设计理念。按照冯·霍兹豪森本人的说法是，他们把“代表马自达的品牌精髓重新熔铸到产品的外观和质感中”。

Von Holzhausen started a project to make Mazda's cars more green by revaluating the types of materials used to fabricate the seats and the fuels going into the vehicles. He had, in fact, just made an ethanol-based concept car when, in early 2008, a friend told him that Tesla needed a chief designer. After playing phone tag for a month with Musk's assistant, Mary Beth Brown, to inquire about the position, von Holzhausen finally got in touch and met Musk for an interview at the SpaceX headquarters.

冯·霍兹豪森还率先开展了马自达环保汽车项目，通过调整座椅材料和燃油类型来达到环保减排目标，2008年年初他便研制出一款乙醇燃料概念车。也正是这个时候，他从朋友那里听说特斯拉正在物色首席设计师。冯·霍兹豪森常常打电话到马斯克办公室应征，与马斯克的私人助理玛丽·贝思·布朗通过电话来回过招了一个月后，冯·霍兹豪森如愿以偿被邀请到SpaceX总部去接受马斯克面试。

Musk instantly saw von Holzhausen, with his bouffant, trendy clothes and laid-back attitude, as a free-spirited, creative complement and wooed him with vigor. They took a tour of the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne and Tesla's headquarters in Silicon Valley. Both facilities were chaotic and reeked of start-up. Musk ramped up the charm and sold von Holzhausen on the idea that he had a chance to shape the future of the automobile and that it made sense to leave his cushy job at a big, proven automaker for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “Elon and I went for a drive in the Roadster, and everyone was checking it out,” von Holzhausen said. “I knew I could stay at Mazda for ten years and get very comfortable or take a huge leap of faith. At Tesla, there was no history, no baggage. There was just a vision of products that could change the world. Who wouldn't want to be involved with that?”

马斯克很快便意识到这个悠然自若的应试者不但思维活跃且富有创造力，随即认定冯·霍兹豪森是自己需要的互补性人才。爱才心切的马斯克马上开始极尽所能地游说后者加入特斯拉。他们还参观了SpaceX的霍桑工厂和特斯拉的硅谷总部，而当时两个地方都还处在初期阶段，略显简陋，于是马斯克只能晓之以理，动之以情，为冯·霍兹豪森规划远大前程的图景：“在这里你有机会一手开创汽车行业的未来，与其待在舒适安逸的大汽车公司里平庸度日，不如抓住这个一生难得的机会，成就一番事业。”“埃隆和我试驾Roadster的时候，所有人都驻足围观，”冯·霍兹豪森回忆道，“我面前摆着两个选择，一是留在马自达，再工作10年然后过上安逸的生活；二是加入特斯拉，放手一搏。特斯拉没有历史包袱，有的却是‘制造一款改变世界的产品’的野心，这样的工作谁听了会不心动呢？”

While von Holzhausen knew the risks of going to a startup, he could not have realized just how close Tesla was to bankruptcy when he joined the company in August 2008. Musk had coaxed von Holzhausen away from a secure job and into the jaws of death. But in many ways, this is what von Holzhausen sought at this point in his career. Tesla did not feel as much like a car company as a bunch of guys tinkering on a big idea. “To me, it was exciting,” he said. “It was like a garage experiment, and it made cars cool again.” The suits were gone, and so were the veteran automotive hands dulled by years working in the industry. In their stead, von Holzhausen found energetic geeks who didn't realize that what they wanted to do was borderline impossible. Musk's presence added to the energy and gave von Holzhausen confidence that Tesla actually could outflank much, much larger competitors. “Elon's mind was always way beyond the present moment,” he said. “You could see that he was a step or three ahead of everyone else and one hundred percent committed to what we were doing.”

尽管冯·霍兹豪森对创业公司的不稳定性有一定心理准备，但他2008年8月真正加入特斯拉时才惊觉，公司当时离破产倒闭竟只有一步之遥。当时的特斯拉与其说是一家汽车公司，还不如说是一群年轻人在捣鼓一场大型实验。冯·霍兹豪森说：“这太激动人心了，简直像当下流行的车库实验室一样，让设计汽车重新成为年轻酷炫的行当。”这里没有西装革履，也没有老气横秋、双手麻木的技工，取而代之的是精力充沛、乐观积极的科技狂人，仿佛全然没有意识到他们的目标远大得近乎不可能，这样高涨的士气和马斯克本人的现场支持分不开，马斯克让冯·霍兹豪森相信，特斯拉出其不意地战胜规模巨大的对手是指日可待的事情。

Von Holzhausen had examined the drawings of the Model S left by Fisker and a clay model of the car and had come away unimpressed. “It was a blob,” he said. “It was clear to me that the people that had been working on this were novices.” Musk realized the same thing and tried to articulate what he wanted. Even though the words were not precise, they were good enough to give von Holzhausen a feel for Musk's vision and the confidence that he could deliver on it. “I said, ‘We're going to start over. We're going to work together and make this awesome.'”

冯·霍兹豪森研究了菲斯克留下来的Model S草图和泥塑模型，并不以为然。冯·霍兹豪森说：“这简直乱成一团，思路不清，很明显做出这个模型的人没有什么经验。”马斯克当时也意识到了同样的问题，但苦于缺乏精准的专业词汇去表达他的想法，尽管如此，冯·霍兹豪森还是大致摸清了马斯克的设想构思，并且有把握可以交出符合其心意的答卷。“我告诉他，我们重头开始并肩作战吧，争取把Model S做到极致。”

To save money, the Tesla design center came to life inside the SpaceX factory. A handful of people on von Holzhausen's team took over one corner and put up a tent to add some separation and secrecy to what they were doing. In the tradition of many a Musk employee, von Holzhausen had to build his own office. He made a pilgrimage to IKEA to buy some desks and then went to an art store to get some paper and pens.

为了节省资金，特斯拉的设计中心就建在SpaceX工厂里面。按照马斯克的传统，员工一律自己负责搭建办公室。冯·霍兹豪森和部分队员在一个角落支起了帐篷作为临时办公区，增加了视觉隔离和私密性，然后在宜家家私搬回来几张桌椅，在艺术用品商店买点纸和笔，简易办公室总算落成。

As von Holzhausen began sketching the outside of the Model S, the Tesla engineers had started up a project to build another electric CLS. They ripped this one down to its very core, removing all of the body structure and then stretching the wheelbase by four inches to match up with some of the early Model S specifications. Things began moving fast for everyone involved in the Model S project. In the span of about three months, von Holzhausen had designed 95 percent of what people see today with the Model S, and the engineers had started building a prototype exterior around the skeleton.

工程师和设计师们分工合作，Model S项目开始投入高速运作，进展迅速。当冯·霍兹豪森开始绘制Model S外形草图时，其他工程师同时开展另一个纯电动CLS项目。工程师团队这次把CLS拆剩一个内核，拆除所有车身结构，按照早期Model S的技术参数把轮距拓宽了4英寸。冯·霍兹豪森仅仅用3个月时间便设计出了95%的Model S外观，与今日市面销售的已然非常接近。与此同时，工程师们已经开始在原型骨架上搭建外壳。

Throughout this process, von Holzhausen and Musk talked every day. Their desks were close, and the men had a natural rapport. Musk said he wanted an aesthetic that borrowed from Aston Martin and Porsche and some specific functions. He insisted, for example, that the car seat seven people. “It was like ‘Holy shit, how do we pull this off in a sedan?'” von Holzhausen said. “But I understood. He had five kids and wanted something that could be thought of as a family vehicle, and he knew other people would have this issue.”

在整个开发过程中，冯·霍兹豪森与马斯克每天都要紧密沟通，他们的办公桌相隔不远，二人之间在工作中有种天成的默契。马斯克希望视觉上能借鉴阿斯顿·马丁和保时捷的风格，并对一些功能有特殊的要求。比如，他坚持这辆车必须能容纳7人。“我当时觉得，天呐，太不可思议了，一辆小轿车怎么可以坐7个人！不过，设身处地想一想也就不难明白了，他^(马斯克)有5个孩子，自然会考虑家庭出行的便捷，他知道其他很多家庭选车时也有相同的考虑。”

Musk wanted to make another statement with a huge touchscreen. This was years before the iPad would be released. The touch-screens that people ran into now and again at airports or shopping kiosks were for the most part terrible. But to Musk, the iPhone and all of its touch functions made it obvious that this type of technology would soon become commonplace.

马斯克构想的另一个创举是在车内嵌入一个宽大的触摸屏，那时大型触屏技术还未兴起，iPad也是几年以后才面市的，而当时人们在机场和商店常见的触摸屏大多都粗制滥造。但马斯克通过iPhone看到了这类触屏操作系统的大好前景。

He would make a giant iPhone and have it handle most of the car's functions. To find the right size for the screen, Musk and von Holzhausen would sit in the skeleton car and hold up laptops of different sizes, placing them horizontally and vertically to see what looked best. They settled on a seventeen-inch screen in a vertical position. Drivers would tap on this screen for every task except for opening the glove box and turning on the emergency lights—jobs required by law to be performed with physical buttons.

他要用一个巨型iPhone来控制汽车的绝大多数功能。为了找到合适大小的屏幕，马斯克和冯·霍兹豪森坐进只有外壳的样板车里，拿着不同型号的电脑屏幕横竖比对，最终选择了17英寸的竖式屏幕，几乎所有的驾驶操作都可以通过控制触摸屏完成，只有个别功能，例如储物箱和应急灯的开关装置，因为法律规定而保留了实体开关。

Since the battery pack at the base of the car would weigh so much, Musk, the designers, and the engineers were always looking for ways to reduce the Model S's weight in other spots. Musk opted to solve a big chunk of this problem by making the body of the Model S out of lightweight aluminum instead of steel. “The non-battery-pack portion of the car has to be lighter than comparable gasoline cars, and making it all aluminum became the obvious decision,” Musk said. “The fundamental problem was that if we didn't make it out of aluminum the car wasn't going to be any good.”

马斯克、设计师和工程师们意识到，为了保持车身的整体轻盈，电池设备本身的重量必须通过其他途径来平衡抵消。比如，他们从车身的材质入手，以铝合金代替钢来减轻车身重量。马斯克说，“我们意识到，除了电池块，其他结构一定要轻便，而用铝制车身是个显而易见的方法，可能也是唯一可行的解决方案。”

Musk's word choice there—“obvious decision”—goes a long way toward explaining how he operates. Yes, the car needed to be light, and, yes, aluminum would be an option for making that happen. But at the time, car manufacturers in North America had almost no experience producing aluminum body panels. Aluminum tends to tear when worked by large presses. It also develops lines that look like stretch marks on skin and make it difficult to lay down smooth coats of paint. “In Europe, you had some Jaguars and one Audi that were made of aluminum, but it was less than five percent of the market,” Musk said. “In North America, there was nothing. It's only recently that the Ford F-150 has arrived as mostly aluminum. Before that, we were the only one.”

注意马斯克此处的用词，“显而易见”一词很好地反映了马斯克特立独行、不拘泥条框的思维习惯。诚然，车身需要轻便，而且从技术层面来说，铝合金的确是不二之选，可是当时的现实情况是整个北美地区范围内，能生产铝合金车身板材的汽车制造商屈指可数。铝材在巨大的压力机下容易拉伸变形，从而形成像妊娠纹一样凹凸不平的表面，导致上色不均。马斯克说：“在欧洲，有几款捷豹轿车和一款奥迪采用了铝制车身，但那仅占整个汽车市场的5%，在北美地区则连一辆铝制车都没有，堪称史无前例。直到最近福特汽车才推出一款接近全铝的福特F–150，但也是后话了，我们是当时唯一一家制造铝制汽车的公司。”

Inside of Tesla, attempts were repeatedly made to talk Musk out of the aluminum body, but he would not budge, seeing it as the only rational choice. It would be up to the Tesla team to figure out how to make the aluminum manufacturing happen. “We knew it could be done,” Musk said. “It was a question of how hard it would be and how long it would take us to sort it out.”

特斯拉团队多次试图说服马斯克放弃铝制车身这个想法，但是马斯克坚持这是唯一的合理选择，丝毫没有妥协的意思，至于如何执行则是特斯拉团队内部应该解决的事情。马斯克说：“我知道我们肯定能做到，只是花多少精力和时间的问题。”

Just about all of the major design choices with the Model S came with similar challenges. “When we first talked about the touch-screen, the guys came back and said, ‘There's nothing like that in the automotive supply chain,'” Musk said. “I said, ‘I know. That's because it's never been put in a fucking car before.'” Musk figured that computer manufacturers had tons of experience making seventeen-inch laptop screens and expected them to knock out a screen for the Model S with relative ease. “The laptops are pretty robust,” Musk said. “You can drop them and leave them out in the sun, and they still have to work.”

Model S的设计过程充满了类似的艰难抉择。马斯克说：“我们最初提出触屏操作系统的想法时，这些家伙回应说，‘汽车产业链里面根本没有现成的产品。’我告诉团队成员，‘这我当然知道，当时压根儿就没有人想到要把屏幕放进到车里。’”马斯克相信，对于经验丰富的计算机制造商们来说，打造出特斯拉适用的17英寸屏幕计算机是轻而易举的事情。马斯克说，“这些操作电脑必须耐用，即使从高处摔落或经过暴晒也必须能正常工作。”

After contacting the laptop suppliers, Tesla's engineers came back and said that the temperature and vibration loads for the computers did not appear to be up to automotive standards. Tesla's supplier in Asia also kept pointing the carmaker to its automotive division instead of its computing division. As Musk dug into the situation more, he discovered that the laptop screens simply had not been tested before under the tougher automotive conditions, which included large temperature fluctuations. When Tesla performed the tests, the electronics ended up working just fine.

特斯加团队初步接触了几家平板电脑厂家，得到的结论是这些电脑的耐热性和耐震度均达不到行车标准。特斯拉的亚洲供应商也纷纷把这项任务推给他们的汽车部门，而不是计算机部门。马斯克深入调查后发现，这些电脑仅仅因为没有专人进行汽车测评便被断定不适合更恶劣的汽车内部环境，这样的定论没有实验依据。特斯拉团队的实验结果证明，这些电子产品安装到车上后，不但性能稳定，还经得起大幅度的温度变化。

Tesla also started working hand in hand with the Asian manufacturers to perfect their then-immature capacitive-touch technology and to find ways to hide the wiring behind the screen that made the touch technology possible. “I'm pretty sure that we ended up with the only seventeen-inch touch-screen in the world,” Musk said. “None of the computer makers or Apple had made it work yet.”

与此同时，特斯拉开始和亚洲制造厂紧密合作，一方面努力完善他们当时尚未成熟的电容式触摸技术，另一方面寻找把线路隐藏在屏幕背后的最佳方案，从而实现灵敏触屏。“我确信我们做出了世界上第一款17英寸触屏系统，当时没有一款电脑，包括苹果产品在内，可以实现这种规格的大屏幕触屏操作。”

The Tesla engineers were radical by automotive industry standards but even they had problems fully committing to Musk's vision. “They wanted to put in a bloody switch or a button for the lights,” Musk said. “Why would we need a switch? When it's dark, turn the lights on.”

尽管特斯拉的工程师已经算是汽车行业里的激进派，但他们面对马斯克的奇思妙想有时也难免觉得无所适从。这样的意见分歧贯穿了整个设计流程，比如谈及车灯的控制时，马斯克曾愤愤不平地说道：“他们竟然想弄个该死的车灯开关，真是多此一举。天黑时车灯会自动打开，就这么简单。”

Next, the engineers put up resistance to the door handles. Musk and von Holzhausen had been studying a bunch of preliminary designs in which the handles had yet to be drawn in and started to fall in love with how clean the car looked. They decided that the handles should only present themselves when a passenger needed to get in the car. Right away, the engineers realized this would be a technological pain, and they completely ignored the idea in one prototype version of the car, much to the dismay of Musk and von Holzhausen. “This prototype had the handles pivot instead of popping out,” von Holzhausen said. “I was upset about it, and Elon said, ‘Why the fuck is this different? We're not doing this.'”

工程师们遇到的下一个难题是门把手的设计。最初的设计图纸是没有画车门把手的，而马斯克和冯·霍兹豪森渐渐喜欢上这样的极简设计，并一致认为车门把手应该在有需要的时候才自动出现。工程师们马上意识到这是个技术难题，因此在制造其中一辆原型车的时候完全无视了这个疯狂的要求。这当然引起了马斯克和冯·霍兹豪森的不满。冯·霍兹豪森抗议道：“这辆原型车把弹出式的把手做成了旋转式，我对这样的投机取巧感到很失望。”而马斯克则直截了当地说：“这为什么和我们的设计不一样？我们绝对不会采纳这个设计。”

To crank up the pace of the Model S design, there were engineers working all day and then others who would show up at 9 P.M. and work through the night. Both groups huddled inside of the 3,000-square-foot tent placed on the SpaceX factory floor. Their workspace looked like a reception area at an outdoor wedding. “The SpaceX guys were amazingly respectful and didn't peek or ask questions,” said Ali Javidan, one of the main engineers. As von Holzhausen delivered his specifications, the engineers built the prototype body of the car.

为了赶Model S的设计进度，工程师们夜以继日，轮班工作^{(晚班从21点开始直到天亮)}。两组工作人员的工作区域便是SpaceX工厂首层那个3 000平方英尺的帐篷，活像室外婚礼的签到处。主要工程师之一阿里·贾维丹^{(Ali Javidan)}说：“令我们惊喜的是，SpaceX的员工非常尊重我们，安分守己，完全没有过问或打扰我们。”工程师们按照冯·霍兹豪森给出的性能参数很快便造出了原型车。

Every Friday afternoon, they brought what they had made into a courtyard behind the factory where Musk would look it over and provide feedback. To run tests on the body, the car would be loaded up with ballast to represent five people and then do loops around the factory until it overheated or broke down.

每周五下午，马斯克都会来到工厂后面的院子检验成果并提出意见。原型车里会放置相当于5人重量的重物，然后围绕着工厂行驶，直到发动机过热或汽车抛锚为止。

The more von Holzhausen learned about Tesla's financial struggles, the more he wanted the public to see the Model S. “Things were so precarious, and I didn't want to miss our opportunity to get this thing finished and show it to the world,” he said. That moment came in March 2009, when, just six months after von Holzhausen had arrived, Tesla unveiled the Model S at a press event held at SpaceX.

冯·霍兹豪森越了解特斯拉的财务困境，越急切地期盼Model S的上市，他说：“情况十万火急，我很担心会错失良机，无法把产品展现给世人。”2009年3月，即冯·霍兹豪森加入特斯拉6个月后，特斯拉在SpaceX举行了媒体发布会，正式宣告Model S的诞生。

Amid rocket engines and hunks of aluminum, Tesla showcased a gray Model S sedan. From a distance, the display model looked glamorous and refined. The media reports from the day described the car as the love child of an Aston Martin and a Maserati. In reality, the sedan barely held together. It still had the base structure of a Mercedes CLS, although no one in the press knew that, and some of the body panels and the hood were stuck to the frame with magnets. “They could just slide the hood right off,” said Bruce Leak, a Tesla owner invited to attend the event. “It wasn't really attached. They would put it back on and try and align it to get the fit and finish right, but then someone would push on it, and it would move again. It was one of those Wizard of Oz, man behind the curtain moments.” A couple of the Tesla engineers practiced test-driving the car for a couple of days leading up to the event to make sure that they knew just how long the car would go before it overheated. While not perfect, the display accomplished exactly what Musk had intended. It reminded people that Tesla had a credible plan to make electric cars more mainstream and that its cars were far more ambitious than what big-time automakers like GM and Nissan seemed to have in mind both from a design and a range perspective.

一辆灰色Model S轿车在一堆火箭引擎和铝材之间停放着，从远处看，样品车显得既奢华又精致。当日到场的媒体喻之为阿斯顿·马丁和玛莎拉蒂的完美结合。但实际上，这辆轿车根本没有组装完成，只是勉强地黏合在一起，底盘仍然是奔驰CLS的底盘，车身板材和引擎盖均由磁铁临时吸附在钢铁车架上，幸而这些内幕并不为人所知。受邀来到现场的车主布鲁斯·里克说：“引擎盖并没有真的安装上去，工程师把它放回去，并重新调整好位置，使其看上去天衣无缝，但只要有人推一下，它便会再次移动，这背后的原理就像《绿野仙踪》里有人在幕后操纵一样。”在发布会准备阶段，一些工程师专门负责试驾和熟悉汽车性能，掌握展示驾车的黄金时间，以免在现场出现引擎过热的情况。诚然这次发布会有美中不足，但马斯克要让世界对特斯拉刮目相看的首要目标达成了。这次发布会向大众证明了特斯拉有足够的潜力把电动汽车推向主流市场，并且特斯拉对设计和性能极致的追求，已经远远超过通用汽车和日产汽车这样的传统行业巨头。

The messy reality behind the display was that the odds of Tesla advancing the Model S from a prop to a sellable car were infinitesimal. The company had the technical know-how and the will for the job. It just didn't have much money or a factory that could crank out cars by the thousands. Building an entire car would require blanking machines that take sheets of aluminum and chop them up into the appropriate size for doors, hoods, and body panels. Next up would be the massive stamping machines and metal dies used to take the aluminum and bend it into precise shapes. Then there would be dozens of robots that would aid in assembling the cars, computer-controlled milling machines for precise metalwork, painting equipment, and a bevy of other machines for running tests. It was an investment that would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Musk would also need to hire thousands of workers.

虽然团队竭尽所能地完成了发布会，但Model S从模型发展到销售成品还需要经历漫长艰辛的历程，项目存活的概率仍然微乎其微。特斯拉有了核心技术和雄心壮志，但缺乏雄厚资金的支持便无法进行批量生产。生产一辆车要经过很多烦琐工序：首先要有冲切机把铝片切割成车门、引擎盖和车身，需要冲压机和金属模具把铝材铸造成特殊形状，然后需要十几个机器人组装部件，还需要电脑程序控制的铣床进行精细金属加工，以及喷漆上色仪器和一系列安全测试仪器。此外，工厂还需要额外雇用几千名人工人，前期的开支动辄上亿美元。

As with SpaceX, Musk preferred to build as much of Tesla's vehicles in-house as possible, but the high costs were limiting just how much Tesla could take on. “The original plan was that we would do final assembly,” said Diarmuid O'Connell, the vice president of business development at Tesla. Partners would stamp out the body parts, do the welding and handle the painting, and ship everything to Tesla, where workers would turn the parts into a whole car. Tesla proposed to build a factory to handle this type of work first in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then later in San Jose, California, and then pulled back on these proposals, much to the dismay of city officials in both locales. The public hemming and hawing around picking the factory site did little to inspire confidence in Tesla's ability to knock out a second car and generated the same type of negative headlines that had surrounded the Roadster's protracted delivery.

马斯克希望特斯拉像SpaceX一样搭建内部生产线，尽可能自主完成生产，但高昂的成本令特斯拉难以承受。特斯拉商务副总裁迪尔米德·奥康奈尔说道，“最初的打算是找厂家代加工车身部件，完成焊接和喷漆再运送过来，特斯拉只负责进行最后组装。”特斯拉一开始提出在新墨西哥州的阿尔伯克基市和加州的圣何塞市建立工厂，但是两个方案谈到最后时刻都不了了之，令当地政府大失所望。特斯拉在工厂选址上的举棋不定代价高昂，对内伤士气，对外造成了负面的舆论影响，就像当年围绕Roadster延期发货事件的负面报道一样阴云不散。

O'Connell had joined Tesla in 2006 to help solve some of the factory and financing issues. He grew up near Boston in a middle-class Irish family and went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College. After that, O'Connell attended the University of Virginia to get a master's degree in foreign policy and then Northwestern, where he got an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. He had fancied himself a scholar of the Soviet Union and its foreign and economic policy and had studied these areas at UVa. “But then, in 1988 and 1989, they're starting to close down the Soviet Union, and, at the very least, I had a brand problem,” O'Connell said. “It started looking to me like I was heading to a career in academia or intelligence.” It was then that O'Connell's career took a detour into the business world, where he became a management consultant working for McCann Erickson Worldwide, Young & Rubicam, and Accenture, advising companies like Coca-Cola and AT&T.

奥康奈尔于2006年临危受命，负责解决特斯拉的工厂建造及财务问题。奥康奈尔出身于波士顿一个爱尔兰裔中产阶级家庭，在达特茅斯学院取得了学士学位后，相继在弗吉尼亚大学与西北大学凯洛格商学院进修，分别取得外交政策硕士学位与工商管理学硕士学位。他曾自诩为苏联专家，并在弗吉尼亚大学时期深入研究苏联的外交和经济政策。奥康奈尔说，“但1988~1989年，苏联开始瓦解，这对我个人的定位也造成了冲击，这样一来，我除了成为学者外别无选择。”奥康奈尔也由此决定转而从商，成为一名公司管理顾问，相继效力于麦肯世界集团^{(McCann Erickson Worldwide)}、电扬广告公司^{(Young and Rubicam)}和埃森哲^(Accenture)，为可口可乐和AT&T^{(美国电话电报公司)}这些大客户提供管理咨询。

O'Connell's career path changed more drastically in 2001 when the planes hit the twin towers in New York. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, O'Connell, like many people, decided to serve the United States in any capacity that he could. In his late thirties, he had missed the window to be a soldier and instead focused his attention on trying to get into national security work. O'Connell went from office to office in Washington, D.C., looking for a job and had little luck until Lincoln Bloomfield, the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, heard him out. Bloomfield needed someone who could help prioritize missions in the Middle East and make sure the right people were working on the right things, and he figured that O'Connell's management consulting experience made him a nice fit for the job. O'Connell became Bloomfield's chief of staff and dealt with a wide range of charged situations, from trade negotiations to setting up an embassy in Baghdad.

受到2001年世贸大厦恐怖袭击事件影响，奥康奈尔的事业观受到了冲击，和许多美国人一样，他决定在国家遭遇危机时尽己所能为自己的国家效力。当时奥康奈尔已年过三十，错过了参军的年纪，因此他想方设法试图寻找一份与国家安全相关的工作。他在首府华盛顿挨家挨户寻找就业机会却一直收效甚微，直至遇到他的伯乐，即当时美国主管政治和军事的助理国务卿林肯·布伦菲尔^{(Lincoln Bloomfield)}。布伦菲尔当时需要有人帮忙梳理中东各大事项并管理人事，而奥康奈尔的管理咨询背景正好派上用场。奥康奈尔因此成为布伦菲尔的总参谋长，负责从贸易谈判到设立巴格达大使馆的大小事务，其间充满了挑战。

After gaining security clearance, O'Connell also had access to a daily report that collected information from intelligence and military personnel on the status of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Every morning at six A.M., the first thing to hit my desk was this overnight report that included information on who got killed and what killed them,” O'Connell said. “I kept thinking, This is insane. Why are we in this place? It was not just Iraq but the whole picture. Why were we so invested in that part of the world?” The unsurprising answer that O'Connell came up with was oil.

奥康奈尔不久便通过了安全调查，有权限查阅每天从伊拉克和巴格达前线传回的战报。“每天清晨六点，最先出现在我办公桌上的便是这份夜间公布的伤亡名单，上面记录着阵亡人员信息和死亡原因。我扪心自问，觉得这一切太不可理喻了，为什么我们会陷入如此境地？我的困惑不安不仅仅来自伊拉克战争，更来自于当时的中东局势，为什么我们每每为中东不惜代价地投入大量资源？”奥康奈尔最后得出这个毫无悬念的结论：石油。

The more O'Connell dug into the United States' dependence on foreign oil, the more frustrated and despondent he became. “My clients were basically the combat commanders—people in charge of Latin America and Central Command,” he said. “As I talked with them and studied and researched, I realized that even in peacetime, so many of our assets were employed to support the economic pipeline around oil.” O'Connell decided that the rational thing to do for his country and for his newborn son was to alter this equation. He looked at the wind industry and the solar industry and the traditional automakers but came away unconvinced that what they were doing could have a radical enough impact on the status quo.

奥康奈尔越是了解美国对石油输出国的依赖，他越感到失望和沮丧。奥康奈尔说：“我的客户基本上都是战斗指挥官——拉丁美洲和中央司令部负责人。我在跟他们沟通的过程中发现，即使在和平时期，我们在以石油为中心的经济路线上也投入了大量资源。”此时，奥康奈尔做出了理性的判断，他认为只有彻底地扭转这个格局才能保障国家和后代的利益。^{(此时他儿子刚出生不久。)}奥康奈尔深入了解了风能和太行能行业，以及传统汽车行业，他不认为这些行业在短期内会有改变局面的能力。

Then, while reading Businessweek, he stumbled on an article about a start-up called Tesla Motors and went to the company's website, which described Tesla as a place “where we are doing things, not talking about things.” “I sent an e-mail telling them I had come from the national security area and was really passionate about reducing our dependence on oil and figured it was just a dead-letter type of thing,” O'Connell said. “I got an e-mail back the next day.”

有一天，奥康奈尔在读《商业周刊》的时候偶然读到了一篇关于特斯拉的文章，随后点击进入特斯拉官网，马上就被一句话吸引了：“在这里我们只干实事，不说空话。”奥康奈尔说：“我给他们写了封邮件，说明了自己从事国家安全工作的背景，提到我热衷寻求新途径，来改变国家过分依赖石油的现状。我当时心想这封邮件大概会石沉大海，杳无音讯。”但在邮件发出的第二天，奥康奈尔便收到了回信。

Musk hired O'Connell and quickly dispatched him to Washington, D.C., to start poking around on what types of tax credits and rebates Tesla might be able to drum up around its electric vehicles. At the same time, O'Connell drafted an application for a Department of Energy stimulus package.* “All I knew is that we were going to need a shitload of money to build this company,” O'Connell said. “My view was that we needed to explore everything.” Tesla had been looking for between $100 million and $200 million, grossly underestimating what it would take to build the Model S. “We were naïve and learning our way in the business,” O'Connell said.

马斯克随即聘请了奥康奈尔并马上派遣他到首都华盛顿，寻找所有对特斯拉有利的政府财政支持，尤其是申请针对电动汽车生产的税务优惠或减免。与此同时，奥康奈尔起草了一份能源部的财政拨款申请书^[6]。奥康奈尔说：“我早就料到制造电动车是个烧钱的行当，我的对策是广泛撒网，不放过任何可能为己所用的资源。”当时特斯拉的筹款目标为1亿~2亿美元，严重低估了制造Model S所需的开支。“我们当初的预算太想当然了，而且还在一边吸取教训，一边自我调整。”

It January 2009, Tesla took over Porsche's usual spot at the Detroit auto show, getting the space cheap because so many other car companies had bailed out on the event. Fisker had a luxurious booth across the hallway with wood flooring and pretty blond booth babes draped over its car. Tesla had the Roadster, its electric powertrain, and no frills.

在2009年1月举行的底特律汽车展中，许多汽车公司都因为行业不景气而没有参展，特斯拉因此以低廉的价格得到了保时捷过往的展位。菲斯克的展台就搭建在通道对面，极尽奢华，不但装了木质地板，还请了一群金发碧眼的车模殷勤地衬托着座驾，相比之下，只展出了Roadster和纯电动动力系统的特斯拉显得朴素多了。

The technology that Tesla's engineers displayed proved good enough to attract the attention of the big boys. Not long after the show, Daimler voiced some interest in seeing what an electric Mercedes A Class car might look and feel like. Daimler executives said they would visit Tesla in about a month to discuss this proposition in detail, and the Tesla engineers decided to blow them away by producing two prototype vehicles before the visit. When the Daimler executives saw what Tesla had done, they ordered four thousand of Tesla's battery packs for a fleet of test vehicles in Germany. The Tesla team pulled off the same kind of feats for Toyota and won its business, too.

特斯拉团队在底特律展示的产品足以证明他们的实力，并开始引起一些关键人物的重视。展会结束不久，戴姆勒汽车制造厂便联系特斯拉，表示有兴趣探讨制造纯电动奔驰A类汽车的可能性。戴姆勒汽车厂的高层表示将在一个月后到访特斯拉以便探讨合作事宜。特斯拉的工程师们决定在访客来访之前制作两款原型车，给访客一个惊喜。戴姆勒的高层领导看到特斯拉的模型后马上下了订单，购买4 000块电池组，打算带回德国总部对一系列汽车进行测试。尝到甜头的特斯拉以同样的方式拿下了丰田汽车公司的订单。

In May 2009, things started to take off for Tesla. The Model S had been unveiled, and Daimler followed that by acquiring a 10 percent stake in Tesla for $50 million. The companies also formed a strategic partnership to have Tesla provide the battery packs for one thousand of Daimler's Smart cars. “That money was important and went a long way back then,” said O'Connell. “It was also a validation. Here is the company that invented the internal combustion engine, and they are investing in us. It was a seminal moment, and I am sure it gave the guys over at the DOE the feeling that we were real. It's not just our scientists saying this stuff is good. It's Mercedes freaking Benz.”

2009年5月，特斯拉开始高速发展起来。Model S发布不久后，戴姆勒汽车制造厂便以5 000万美元的价格收购了10%的特斯拉股份，并与特斯拉形成战略合作关系，指定特斯拉为1 000辆戴姆勒智能汽车的电池供应商。“这笔投资对于我们来说至关重要，而且影响深远。毕竟一个发明了内燃机的伟大公司投资了我们，这不但帮助我们渡过了财务难关，也是对特斯拉莫大的肯定。就连奔驰也青睐我们的产品，这证明了我们并不是孤芳自赏！我敢确保那些能源部的工作人员会因此对我们刮目相看。”

Sure enough, in January 2010, the Department of Energy struck a $465 million loan agreement with Tesla.* The money was far more than Tesla had ever expected to get from the government. But it still represented just a fraction of the $1 billion plus that most carmakers needed to bring a new vehicle to market. So, while Musk and O'Connell were thrilled to get the money, they still wondered if Tesla would be able to live up to the bargain. Tesla would need one more windfall or, perhaps, to steal a car factory. And in May 2010, that's more or less what it did.

果然不出所料，2010年1月能源部便与特斯拉签下了4.65亿美元的贷款协议。^[7]尽管这笔贷款的金额远远超过了特斯拉的期待值，但一般情况下要把一款新车推向市场起码需要10亿美元的资金，而这笔政府拨款不过占其中的零头。因此马斯克与奥康奈尔一边为这笔意外收获喜出望外，一边为特斯拉能否兑现承诺担忧。要解决燃眉之急，特斯拉需要另外一笔意外之财，或不劳而获去“偷”一个汽车工厂。事实上，2010年5月，特斯拉的确在某种意义上不劳而获，“偷”得了一个工厂。

General Motors and Toyota had teamed up in 1984 to build New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., or NUMMI, on the site of a former GM assembly plant in Fremont, California, a city on the outskirts of Silicon Valley. The companies hoped the joint facility would combine the best of American and Japanese automaking skills and result in higher-quality, cheaper cars. The factory went on to pump out millions of vehicles like the Chevy Nova and Toyota Corolla. Then the recession hit, and GM found itself trying to climb out of bankruptcy. It decided to abandon the plant in 2009, and Toyota followed right after, saying it would close down the whole facility, leaving five thousand people without jobs.

通用汽车和丰田汽车在1984年合作建立了新联合汽车制造公司^{(New United Manufacturing Inc.，简称NUMMI)}，厂址设在加州硅谷外围的弗里蒙特市，前身是通用汽车的组装厂。这两家企业希望通过设施整合来结合美国和日本汽车技术的优势，从而生产出更物美价廉的汽车。这个工厂产出过数以百万计的雪佛兰和丰田花冠汽车，直到经济开始衰退，通用汽车陷入濒临破产的财政泥沼。出于企业利益考虑，通用汽车于2009年放弃了工厂，而丰田汽车不久后也宣布工厂结业，导致5 000员工失业。

All of a sudden, Tesla had the chance to buy a 5.3-million-square-foot plant in its backyard. Just one month after the last Toyota Corolla went off the manufacturing line in April 2010, Tesla and Toyota announced a partnership and transfer of the factory. Tesla agreed to pay $42 million for a large portion of the factory (once worth $1 billion), while Toyota invested $50 million in Tesla for a 2.5 percent stake in the company. Tesla had basically secured a factory, including the massive metal-stamping machines and other equipment, for free.*

就这样在命运的撮合下，特斯拉得以收购这块落在自家后院的面积为550万平方英尺的现成工厂。2010年4月，丰田花冠停产，仅一个月后特斯拉与丰田汽车便联合宣布了二者的合作关系与工厂所属权的转让。特斯拉以4 200万美元收购大部分的工厂^{(曾经市值为10亿美元)}，而丰田汽车以5 000万美元收购特斯拉2.5%的股份。如此一来，特斯拉基本上不费分毫便获得了工厂及其连带的巨型金属冲压机等设备。^[8]

洛伊德说：“如果没有美国能源部的贷款，没有NUMMI的工厂，特斯拉不可能如此快速地踏上正轨。”

The string of fortunate turns for Tesla left Musk feeling good. Just after the factory deal closed in the summer of 2010, Tesla started the process of filing for an initial public offering. The company obviously needed as much capital as it could get to bring the Model S to market and push forward with its other technology projects. Tesla hoped to raise about $200 million.

特斯拉的接连好运让马斯克信心大增。2010年夏天，汽车厂交易完成后，马斯克开始准备申请首次公开募股，公司显然需要尽可能多的资本才能把Model S推向市场，并发展其他科技项目。特斯拉这次向着两亿美元的融资目标进发。

For Musk, going public represented something of a Faustian bargain. Ever since the Zip2 and PayPal days, Musk has done everything in his power to maintain absolute control over his companies. Even if he remained the largest shareholder in Tesla, the company would be subjected to the capricious nature of the public markets. Musk, the ultimate long-term thinker, would face constant second-guessing from investors looking for short-term returns. Tesla would also be subject to public scrutiny, as it would be forced to open its books for public consumption.

对于马斯克来说，公司上市更像是一次浮士德式的灵魂买卖，他其实并不愿意缠上随着上市而来的烦恼。尽管马斯克仍会是特斯拉最大股东，但上市后的公司必定会受风云变幻的公共市场左右。从马斯克在Zip2和PayPal的管理生涯可以看出，他是必须对自己的公司有绝对控制权的领导者，他的远见也必定会与投资者的急功近利背道而驰。另外，特斯拉还会因此被迫公开内部财政数据。

This was bad because Musk prefers to operate in secrecy and because Tesla's financial situation looked awful. The company had one product (the Roadster), had huge development costs, and had bordered on bankruptcy months earlier. The car blog Jalopnik greeted the Tesla IPO as a Hail Mary rather than a sound fiscal move. “For lack of a better phrase, Tesla is a money pit,” the blog wrote. “Since the company's founding in 2003, it's managed to incur over $290 million in losses on just $147.6 million in revenue.” Told by a source that Tesla hoped to sell 20,000 units of the Model S per year at $58,000 a pop, Jalopnik scoffed. “Even considering the supposed pent-up demand among environmentalists for a car like the Model S, those are ambitious goals for a small company planning to launch a niche luxury product into a soft market. Frankly, we're skeptical. We've seen how brutal and unforgiving the market can be, and other automakers aren't simply going to roll over and surrender that volume to Tesla.” Other pundits concurred with this assessment.

马斯克希望采用相对私密的运营模式来掩盖特斯拉深陷泥沼的财务状况，毕竟特斯拉不久前才渡过破产危机，目前只有Roadster一款产品，并即将投入高昂的成本开发新产品。知名汽车论坛加洛普尼克^(Jalopnik)认为，特斯拉的上市是听天由命的无奈之选，而不是一个理智的、遵循市场规律的融资行为。有内幕消息称，特斯拉计划每年销售两万辆最高定价在5.8万美元的Model S汽车，加洛普尼克对此嗤之以鼻：“把话往狠一点儿说，特斯拉简直是一个烧钱黑洞，这家公司居然可以在收入1.476亿美元的同时亏损近2.9亿美元。即使Model S像传说中一样极具潜力，特斯拉这样的小公司在要这片受众群不广的奢华座驾疲软市场做出成绩实在野心高远，坦白说，我们对此并不乐观，因为我们亲眼见证过汽车市场的残酷竞争，其他汽车公司是绝对不会轻易把这片处女地拱手相让给特斯拉的。”其他业内评论人士也同意这样的观点。

Tesla went public on June 29, 2010, nonetheless. It raised $226 million, with the company's shares shooting up 41 percent that day. Investors looked past Tesla's $55.7 million loss in 2009 and the more than $300 million the company had spent in seven years. The IPO stood as the first for an American carmaker since Ford went public in 1956. Competitors continued to treat Tesla like an annoying, ankle-biting dachshund. Nissan's CEO, Carlos Ghosn, used the event to remind people that Tesla was but a pipsqueak and that his company had plans to pump out up to 500,000 electric cars by 2012.

尽管如此，特斯拉还是在2010年6月29日上市了，股价于当天上升41个百分点，为特斯拉筹得2.26亿美元，是继1956年福特汽车上市以来首家上市的美国汽车企业。投资者们仿佛原谅了特斯拉不堪回首的财务状况，包括2009年高达5.57亿美元的亏损，以及7年间约3亿美元的开销。日产汽车的首席执行官卡洛斯·高森^{(Carlos Ghosn)}安然自若地告知大众，相比2012年年末前出售50万辆汽车的日产企业，特斯拉只不过是个微不足道的小角色。

Flush with funds, Musk began expanding some of the engineering teams and formalizing the development work around the Model S. Tesla's main offices moved from San Mateo to a larger building in Palo Alto, and von Holzhausen expanded the design team in Los Angeles. Javidan hopped between projects, helping develop technology for the electrified Mercedes-Benz, an electric Toyota Rav4, and prototypes of the Model S. The Tesla team worked fast inside of a tiny lab with about 45 people knocking out 35 Rav4 test vehicles at the rate of about two cars per week. The alpha version of the Model S, including newly stamped body parts from the Fremont factory, a revamped battery pack, and revamped power electronics, came to life in the basement of the Palo Alto office. “The first prototype was finished at about two A.M.,” Javidan said. “We were so excited that we drove it around without glass, any interior, or a hood.”

马斯克用新筹集的资金扩张工程师队伍，使Model S的发展步入正轨，初具规模。特斯拉的主办公区从圣马提奥市迁移到帕洛阿尔托，洛杉矶的设计团队在冯·霍兹豪森的带领下也逐步扩张。首席工程师阿里·贾维丹在项目之间奔波，同时进行的有奔驰电动车项目、丰田汽车Rav4项目以及ModelS原型车的搭建。特斯拉团队规模扩大到45人，在狭小的实验室里以平均每周两辆的生产效率出产共35辆Rav4测试车。与此同时，第一代Model S汽车在帕洛阿尔托总部地下室横空出世，这次Model S换上了弗里蒙特工厂新压印的车身、新改良的电池组和电源电路板。“我们于凌晨两点完成了第一辆原型车，当时大家都兴高采烈，迫不及待地试驾这辆还没有装挡风玻璃、内部装置和引擎盖的车。”

A day or two later, Musk came to check out the vehicle. He jumped into the car and drove it to the opposite end of the basement, where he could spend some time alone with it. He got out and walked around the vehicle, and then the engineers came over to hear his take on the machine. This process would be repeated many times in the months to come. “He would generally be positive but constructive,” Javidan said. “We would try and get him rides whenever we could, and he might ask for the steering to be tighter or something like that before running off to another meeting.”

没过几天马斯克便亲自来验收产品，他独自把座驾从地下室的一头开到另一头，然后走下来绕车观察，工程师们迎上前来记录马斯克的意见。这样的审核流程在往后的日子里不断重复着。贾维丹说：“马斯克有时会提出诸如拧紧方向盘一类的调整要求，提的意见大多都积极而有建设性。我们一有机会便会请他来试车，尽可能让他多接触产品，不过他常常要赶去参加其他会议。”

About a dozen of the alpha cars were produced. A couple went to suppliers like Bosch to begin work on the braking systems, while others were used for various tests and design tweaks. Tesla's executives kept the vehicles rotating on a strict schedule, giving one team two weeks for cold-weather testing and then shipping that alpha car to another team right away for powertrain tuning. “The guys from Toyota and Daimler were blown away,” Javidan said. “They might have two hundred alpha cars and several hundred to a thousand beta cars. We were doing everything from crash tests to the interior design with about fifteen cars. That was amazing to them.”

特斯拉一共产出了约12辆优品车，一部分被送到博世集团^(Bosch)一类的供应商那里安装刹车系统，另一部分则被运到车间进行各种测试和微调。特斯拉的领导层确保整个加工流程紧凑高效，一辆优品汽车在经过两周的低温测试后，便马上会被送去做电机调试，不容许有停顿滞留。贾维丹说：“丰田和戴勒姆的负责人都被我们折服了。我们为他们提供了大约200辆优品车和几百，甚至上千辆良品车，其中有15辆完成了撞击测试和内部装修。如此高效率的作业让他们觉得匪夷所思。”

Tesla employees developed similar techniques to their counterparts at SpaceX for dealing with Musk's high demands. The savvy engineers knew better than to go into a meeting and deliver bad news without some sort of alternative plan at the ready. “One of the scariest meetings was when we needed to ask Elon for an extra two weeks and more money to build out another version of the Model S,” Javidan said. “We put together a plan, stating how long things would take and what they would cost. We told him that if he wanted the car in thirty days it would require hiring some new people, and we presented him with a stack of resumes. You don't tell Elon you can't do something. That will get you kicked out of the room. You need everything lined up. After we presented the plan, he said, ‘Okay, thanks.' Everyone was like, ‘Holy shit, he didn't fire you.'”

连特斯拉的SpaceX团队也得学习Model S的生产模式，以便达到马斯克的严格要求。精明的工程师们学会遇到问题的时候必定先竭尽所能找出可能的解决方案，否则不会冒失地向马斯克汇报坏消息。贾维丹说：“最可怕的事情莫过于向埃隆申请额外的时间或者资金去建造另一款Model S。我们必须事先做好计划，提前告诉他所需时间和资金预算，说明如果要在30天内把车造好需要招聘更多人，并附上一叠事先筛选过的简历。万万不能一上来就告诉马斯克某件事情做不了，他会马上把所有人轰出办公室。我们必须把利害关系一一列出并提供完整的解决方案。当我们把计划阐述完毕后，马斯克说了声‘好的，谢谢’的时候，所有人都大松一口气，并暗自庆幸没有被解雇。”

There were times when Musk would overwhelm the Tesla engineers with his requests. He took a Model S prototype home for a weekend and came back on the Monday asking for around eighty changes. Since Musk never writes anything down, he held all the alterations in his head and would run down the checklist week by week to see what the engineers had fixed. The same engineering rules as those at SpaceX applied. You did what Musk asked or were prepared to burrow down into the properties of materials to explain why something could not be done. “He always said, ‘Take it down to the physics,'” Javidan said.

工程师们偶尔会收到马斯克汹涌而至的新点子并为此措手不及。马斯克曾经在周末把Model S原型车开回家，结果周一便提出了80个改动之处。马斯克没有写字记录的习惯，所有的改动方案都诞生并储存在大脑里，每周仅凭脑海里的清单有条不紊地与工程师们核对执行进度。他一直严格要求工程师的执行力，杜绝借口，对SpaceX与特斯拉团队一视同仁。如果你打算告诉马斯克某件事情没有办法做到，那你最好已经做足了功课并做好心理准备深入每一个技术环节，从最根本的原理出发逐步解释为什么行不通。首席工程师贾维丹说，“他^(马斯克)总是说，让最基本的物理原理说话。”

As the development of the Model S neared completion in 2012, Musk refined his requests and dissection style. He went over the Model S with von Holzhausen every Friday at Tesla's design studio in Los Angeles. Von Holzhausen and his small team had moved out of the corner in the SpaceX factory and gotten their own hangar-shaped facility near the rear of the SpaceX complex.* The building had a few offices and then one large, wide-open area where various mock-ups of vehicles and parts awaited inspection. During a visit I made in 2012, there was one complete Model S, a skeletal version of the Model X—an as yet to be released SUV—and a selection of tires and hubcaps lined up against the wall.

直到2012年Model S的研发接近尾声的时候，马斯克才逐渐改良了他分析问题和提出建议的方式。马斯克与冯·霍兹豪森每周五在洛杉矶的设计工作室举行例会，此时冯·霍兹豪森的队伍已经从SpaceX工厂的小角落搬到工厂后方的特制机舱形办公楼。^[9]该建筑有数间办公室和一个巨大宽敞的区域专门放置待测的汽车实体模型和部件。我于2012年前往参观时，工作室里放着一辆完整版Model S和一辆框架版Model X^{(一辆尚未发布的SUV)}，各种轮胎和轮毂在墙边一字排开。马斯克通常负责开车，冯·霍兹豪森在副驾座陪同。

Musk sank into the Model S driver seat and von Holzhausen climbed into the passenger seat. Musk's eyes darted around for a few moments and then settled onto the sun visor. It was beige and a visible seam ran around the edge and pushed the fabric out. “It's fish-lipped,” Musk said. The screws attaching the visor to the car were visible as well, and Musk insisted that every time he saw them it felt like tiny daggers were stabbing him in the eyes. The whole situation was unacceptable. “We have to decide what is the best sun visor in the world and then do better,” Musk said. A couple of assistants taking notes outside of the car jotted this down.

马斯克四处审视了一番后将目光落在了米白色的遮阳板上，上面一条可见的接缝使布料微微外拱，马斯克评价道“长得像鱼唇似的”；同时，遮阳板固定在车上可见的螺丝也被他视为眼中钉，非消灭干净不可；总之，一切都不尽如人意。“我们首先要决定世界上最好的遮阳板是什么样子的，然后做得比那更好。”马斯克一边说，几个助手一边在车外记录着。

This process played out again with the Model X. This was to be Tesla's merger of an SUV and a minivan built off the Model S foundation. Von Holzhausen had four different versions of the vehicle's center console resting on the floor, so that they could be slotted in one by one and viewed by Musk. The pair spent most of their time, however, agonizing over the middle row of seats. Each one had an independent base so that each passenger could adjust his seat rather than moving the whole row collectively. Musk loved the freedom this gave the passenger but grew concerned after seeing all three seats in different positions. “The problem is that they will never be aligned and might look a mess,” Musk said. “We have to make sure they are not too hodgy podgy.”

另外一条产品线Model X被特斯拉定义为越野车和厢型车的结合版，在研发阶段也沿袭了上述审核流程。冯·霍兹豪森事先准好四种不同的汽车中央控制台，在地面一字排开，依次装上以便马斯克逐一试验。但让二人组最伤脑筋的不是其他部件，而是中间一排座位的设计，马斯克希望每个座位各有独立底座可自由调节，以此取代每次只能调整一排座椅的传统做法。但看到三个座位各自处在不同位置之后，马斯克开始担心这样的做法会影响整体感。“这样一来，这三个位置很难再对齐，看上去一团糟。我们必须确保看上去不会杂乱无章。”

The idea of Musk as a design expert has long struck me as bizarre. He's a physicist at heart and an engineer by demeanor. So much of who Musk is says that he should fall into that Silicon Valley stereotype of the schlubby nerd who would only know good design if he read about it in a textbook. The truth is that there might be some of that going on with Musk, and he's turned it into an advantage. He's very visual and can store things that others have deemed to look good away in his brain for recall at any time. This process has helped Musk develop a good eye, which he's combined with his own sensibilities, while also refining his ability to put what he wants into words.

至于马斯克是怎么成为设计专家的这件事让我一直迷惑不解，因为他由内而外都散发着物理学家和工程师的严谨气质，根据硅谷典型的刻板书呆子形象推断的话，他对好设计的认知一五一十均出自教科书。而事实上，马斯克可能在某种程度上也利用了他刻苦勤学的特点帮助他入门设计学。他有很强的视觉感，脑海里保存了大量大家公认的好设计，并能信手拈来为己所用，视觉积累加上原有的理性判断使其整体鉴赏能力迅速提升，与此同时，他也在不断锻炼把抽象视觉具化为语言的能力。

The result is a confident, assertive perspective that does resonate with the tastes of consumers. Like Steve Jobs before him, Musk is able to think up things that consumers did not even know they wanted—the door handles, the giant touch-screen—and to envision a shared point of view for all of Tesla's products and services. “Elon holds Tesla up as a product company,” von Holzhausen said. “He's passionate that you have to get the product right. I have to deliver for him and make sure it's beautiful and attractive.”

马斯克这样的训练效果显著，不但让他更了解消费者的心理，而且让他表达起来更加顺畅自如，具有说服力。像乔布斯一样，马斯克能够精准地把握消费者心理，甚至比消费者更清楚他们想要的是什么，比如说自动感应的车门把手与触屏操控系统。这样的前瞻性在特斯拉所有的产品和服务中均有淋漓尽致的体现，使特斯拉出品有了统一性。冯·霍兹豪森说，“埃隆把特斯拉定义成一个以产品为先的公司。我必须把他的设想落到实处，把产品做得天衣无缝，尽善尽美。”

With the Model X, Musk again turned to his role as a dad to shape some of the flashiest design elements of the vehicle. He and von Holzhausen were walking around the floor of an auto show in Los Angeles, and they both complained about the awkwardness of getting to the middle and back row seats in an SUV. Parents who have felt their backs wrench while trying to angle a child and car seat into a vehicle know this reality all too well, as does any decent-sized human who has tried to wedge into a third row seat. “Even on a minivan, which is supposed to have more room, almost one-third of the entry space is covered by the sliding door,” von Holzhausen said. “If you could open up the car in a way that is unique and special, that could be a real game changer. We took that kernel of an idea back and worked up forty or fifty design concepts to solve the problem, and I think we ended up with one of the most radical ones.”

马斯克再次从父亲这一角色中找到灵感，塑造了Model X最耀眼的设计性突破。他和冯·霍兹豪森在洛杉矶车展中交谈时发现，他们都很不满意现成的SUV中后部车门开关设计。父母在把儿童安置在后座上时常常要大幅度侧头扭腰，并且任何一个标准体型的成年人要挤进最后一排都难免会有压迫感。“厢型车看上去宽敞一些，但实际上1/3的入车空间都被推拉门挡住了。只要我们能找到别出心裁的开门方法就能出奇制胜，”冯·霍兹豪森说，“我们当天回去就以此作为突破点开始着手设计解决方案，在40~50套方案里面，我们选择了其中最具颠覆性的一个。”

The Model X has what Musk coined as “falcon-wing doors.” They're hinged versions of the gull-wing doors found on some high-end cars like the DeLorean. The doors go up and then flop over in a constrained enough way that the Model X won't rub up against a car parked close to it or hit the ceiling in a garage. The end result is that a parent can plop a child in the second-row passenger seat without needing to bend over or twist at all.

Model X的车门设计采用了马斯克所谓的“鹰翼门”，相当于在德罗宁等高档汽车的“鸥翼门”基础上加多了一套铰链，使得车门在上升的过程中同时把翼宽收窄至特定角度，从而避免与并排停放的车辆或者车库顶部发生碰撞。最终的目的是让大人们可以轻松自如地把孩子安置到后座上。

When Tesla's engineers first heard about the falcon-wing doors, they cringed. Here was Musk with another crazy ask. “Everyone tried to come up with an excuse as to why we couldn't do it,” Javidan said. “You can't put it in the garage. It won't work with things like skis. Then, Elon took a demo model to his house and showed us that the doors opened. Everyone is mumbling, ‘Yeah, in a fifteen-million-dollar house, the doors will open just fine.'” Like the controversial door handles on the Model S, the Model X's doors have become one of its most striking features and the thing consumers talk about the most. “I was one of the first people to test it out with a kid's car seat,” Javidan said. “We have a minivan, and you have to be a contortionist to get the seat into the middle row. Compared to that, the Model X was so easy. If it's a gimmick, it's a gimmick that works.”

特斯拉工程师第一次听说“鹰翼门”的时候都一筹莫展。“每个人都试图找借口逃避问题，比如放不进车库、放不下滑雪橇等。于是埃隆把大家带到他家并展示车门如何在车库里打开。大家小声嘀咕着，‘在价值1 500万美元的房子里什么样的车门都打得开吧。’”结果Model X的“鹰翼门”像Model S智能门把手一样吸引大众眼球，成为舆论焦点。贾维丹说，“作为最初几个尝试安装婴儿座位的测试者，我亲身感受到车门设计改良带来的便利，相比之下，我们家的厢型车也许只有会伸缩术的瑜伽大师才能在后座安置婴儿座位。即使硬要说这是个噱头，也得承认是个实用的噱头。”

During my 2012 visit to the design studio, Tesla had a number of competitors' vehicles in the parking lot nearby, and Musk made sure to demonstrate the limitations of their seating compared to the Model X. He tried with honest effort to sit in the third row of an Acura SUV, but, even though the car claimed to have room for seven, Musk's knees were pressed up to his chin, and he never really fit into the seat. “That's like a midget cave,” he said. “Anyone can make a car big on the outside. The trick is to make it big on the inside.” Musk went from one rival's car to the next, illuminating the vehicles' flaws for me and von Holzhausen. “It's good to get a sense for just how bad the other cars are,” he said.

我于2012年去参观设计工作室时，附近的停车场里面停放着几辆竞品，马斯克每次经过都必然会做出对比，指出竞品的不足与Model X的优越性。马斯克亲自挤进一辆7座讴歌SUV^{(Acura Suv)}的最后一排，他得抱膝且弯腰才勉强挤得下，膝盖甚至碰到了下巴。马斯克依次向我和冯·霍兹豪森指出这些传统车辆的不足之处。“这简直像个小矮人的洞穴一样。让车的外观看起来宽大容易，但要做到内部空间同样宽敞实用才是真本事，”马斯克说，“我们非常有必要摸清楚竞品的劣势在哪里。”

When these statements fly out of Musk's mouth, it's momentarily shocking. Here's a guy who needed nine years to produce about three thousand cars ridiculing automakers that build millions of vehicles every year. In that context, his ribbing comes off as absurd.

第一次听见马斯克对其他汽车的负面评价时我感到很惊讶：这个用了9年时间才制造3 000辆车的年轻人居然在调侃每年产量上亿的汽车公司，怎么说都有点荒唐。

Musk, though, approaches everything from a Platonic perspective. As he sees it, all of the design and technology choices should be directed toward the goal of making a car as close to perfect as possible. To the extent that rival automakers haven't, that's what Musk is judging. It's almost a binary experience for him. Either you're trying to make something spectacular with no compromises or you're not. And if you're not, Musk considers you a failure. This position can look unreasonable or foolish to outsiders, but the philosophy works for Musk and constantly pushes him and those around him to their limits.

但马斯克对汽车制造的理解是建立在柏拉图式的精神层面上的，从他的角度来看，汽车制造只有达到设计和科技的完美结合才称得上有意义。他黑白分明的衡量成败的标准与竞争对手们的截然不同，导致得出的结论也大相径庭。这样的态度在局外人看来也许不可理喻，但正是这种极端的哲学鞭策着马斯克和他的团队不断突破世俗的条框，追求心中的极致。

On June 22, 2012, Tesla invited all of its employees, some select customers, and the press to its factory in Fremont to watch as the first Model S sedans were taken home. Depending on which of the many promised delivery dates you pick, the Model S was anywhere from eighteen months to two-plus years late. Some of the delays were a result of Musk's requests for exotic technologies that needed to be invented. Other delays were simply a function of this still quite young automaker learning how to produce an immaculate luxury vehicle and needing to go through the trial and error tied to becoming a more mature, more refined company.

2012年6月22日，特斯拉邀请全体员工、部分顾客和媒体成员来到弗里蒙特的工厂观看第一辆Model S的交货仪式。特斯拉的交货日期有18个月到两年不等的延期，等待长短因顾客具体需求而异。推迟交货有主观与客观原因：一是马斯克对车辆本身诸多天马行空的想象需要时间落实；二是这支初出茅庐的特斯拉工程师队伍还没有足够的经验驾驭奢华座驾的生产，需要经过长时间不断历练试错才能与大公司的批量生产规模匹敌。

The outsiders were blown away by their first glimpse of the Tesla factory. Musk had T-E-S-L-A painted in enormous black letters on the side of the building so that people driving by on the freeway, or flying above for that matter, were made well aware of the company's presence.

第一次造访斯拉工厂的客人瞬间被这个地方的魅力震慑住了。马斯克在工厂外墙上喷上巨大的“特斯拉”字母，让驾驶路过^{(甚至上空飞过)}的过客都能感受到特斯拉的存在。

The inside of the factory, once dressed in the dark, dingy tones of General Motors and Toyota, had taken on the Musk aesthetic. The floors received a white epoxy, the walls and beams were painted white, the thirty-foot tall stamping machines were white, and then much of the other machinery, like the teams of the robots, had been painted red, making the place look like an industrial version of Santa Claus's workshop. Just as he did at SpaceX, Musk placed the desks of his engineers right on the factory floor, where they worked in an area cordoned off by rudimentary cubicle dividers. Musk had a desk in this area as well.*

工厂里面也把通用汽车与本田汽车原来沉闷单调的黑色主题改成了马斯克标志性的白色，使工厂充满个人特色和设计感：地面铺上洁白的树脂地板，墙壁梁柱均刷成白色，30英尺高的冲压机也是白色的，而机器人队列和其他工具则被喷成红色。红白颜色的搭配让厂房看起来像是圣诞老人的大型车间。马斯克沿用了SpaceX的格局，把工程师集中在首层，在带隔板的办公桌围起来的区域里办公，当中包括了马斯克本人的办公桌。^[10]

The Model S launch event took place in a section of the factory where they finish off the cars. There's a part of the floor with various grooves and bumps that the cars pass over, as technicians listen for any rattles. There's also a chamber where water can be sprayed at high pressure onto the car to check for leaks. For the very last inspection, the Model S cruises onto a raised platform made out of bamboo, which, when coupled with lots of LED lighting, is meant to provide an abundant amount of contrast so that people can spot flaws on the body. For the few first months that the Model S came off the line, Musk went to this bamboo stage to inspect every vehicle. “He was down on all fours looking up under the wheel well,” said Steve Jurvetson, the investor and Tesla board member.

Model S的发布会就在工厂完成产品最后一道工序的地方举行，特斯拉的工作人员在那里完成车子的检测工作。一部分区域的地板布满凹槽和凸带，是技工用听觉检查经过车辆有无松动零件的地方，另一部分区域是高压水测区，用来测试车辆防水性。最后一个步骤是曝光检测，需要在竹子铺成的平台上进行，工作人员在强烈的发光二极管的照射下检查车辆喷漆是否光洁无瑕。Model S出产的前几个月里，马斯克在这个竹台上亲自检验了每一辆成品。投资人兼董事会成员史蒂芬·左维森说：“有时他^(马斯克)会趴在地上，从轮轴向上仔细检查。”

Hundreds of people had gathered around this stage to watch as the first dozen or so cars were presented to their owners. Many of the employees were factory workers who had once been part of the autoworkers' union, lost their jobs when the NUMMI plant closed, and were now back at work again, making the car of the future. They waved American flags and wore red, white, and blue visors. A handful of the workers cried as the Model S sedans were lined up on the stage. Even Musk's most cynical critics would have softened for a moment while watching the proceedings. Say what you will about Tesla receiving government money or hyping up the promise of the electric car, it was trying to do something big and different, and people were getting hired by the thousands as a result. With machines humming in the background, Musk gave a brief speech and then handed the owners their keys. They drove off the bamboo platform and out the factory doors, while the Tesla employees provided a standing ovation.

当天有几千人聚集在这里观看前十几位特斯拉顾客的签收仪式，当中有不少工作人员是昔日新联合汽车制造公司倒闭时失业的员工，现在在特斯拉参与制造属于未来的汽车，他们戴着红白蓝国旗色的鸭舌帽，纷纷晃动着国旗。当看到Model S一字排开亮相的时候，不少人还因心情激动而落泪。马斯克在机器高速运转的背景音中做了言简意赅的致辞，并把钥匙交付到顾客手中。特斯拉的新主人们逐个把车开过竹台，最终驶离工厂大门，特斯拉团队随即站起身欢呼鼓掌。即使是和马斯克有过节的批评家都会在看到这一幕的时候软下心来。不管特斯拉拿了政府多少钱，又把电动车这一噱头炒作得多么炙手可热，这个公司和团队的的确确在为开辟电动汽车前景的远大目标一步一个脚印地付出努力，并且在此过程中为成千上万的人创造了就业机会。

Just four weeks earlier, SpaceX had flown cargo to the International Space Station and had its capsule returned to Earth—firsts all around for a private company. That feat coupled with the launch of the Model S led to a rapid transformation in the way the world outside of Silicon Valley perceived Musk. The guy who was always promising, promising, promising was doing—and doing spectacular things. “I may have been optimistic with respect to the timing on some of these things, but I didn't over-promise on the outcome,” Musk told me during an interview after the Model S launch. “I have done everything I said I was going to do.”

仅仅4周前，SpaceX成功往国际空间站运送补给并使太空船安全返回地球，成为首家完成此壮举的私有企业。SpaceX的成功加上今天的Model S发布使硅谷以外的世界对马斯克这个一直勇于大胆承诺的年轻人有了全新的认识。马斯克在Model S发布会结束后接受媒体采访时说道，“我也许低估了完成某些任务所需要的时间，但是最终结果一定令人满意。事实证明，我做到了我承诺的所有事情。”

Musk did not have Riley around to celebrate with and share in this run of good fortune. They had divorced, and Musk had begun to think about dating again, if he could find the time. Even with this turmoil in his personal life, however, Musk had reached a point of calm that he had not felt in many years. “My main emotion is that there is a bit of weight off my shoulders,” he said at the time. Musk took his boys to Maui to meet up with Kimbal and other relatives, marking his first real vacation in a number of years.

但莱莉无缘与马斯克分享这次成功的喜悦，因为两人在此前已经离婚，而马斯克也在极短的闲暇时间里开始试着和别人约会。即便感情生活一波三折，马斯克的内心世界却是久违的平静，他说：“终于感觉到肩上的担子稍微减轻了一些。”马斯克带着儿子们一起到夏威夷的毛伊岛度假，探望了金巴尔和其他亲戚，这是他若干年来第一个真正意义上的假期。

It was right after this holiday that Musk let me have the first substantial glimpse into his life. Skin still peeling off his sunburnt arms, Musk met with me at the Tesla and SpaceX headquarters, at the Tesla design studio, and at a Beverley Hills screening of a documentary he had helped sponsor. The film, Baseball in the Time of Cholera, was good but grim and explored a cholera outbreak in Haiti. It turned out that Musk had visited Haiti the previous Christmas, filling his jet with toys and MacBook Airs for an orphanage. Bryn Mooser, the codirector of the film, told me that during a barbecue Musk had taught the kids how to fire off model rockets and then later went to visit a village deeper in the jungle by traveling in a dugout canoe.

正是在这次假期之后，马斯克开始渐渐放下防备，对我敞开心扉。马斯克刚度假回来，晒伤的皮肤还在脱皮，但已经迅速进入工作状态。当时马斯克参与投资的纪录片《霍乱时期的棒球》^{(Baseball in the Time of Cholera)}分别在特斯拉与SpaceX总部、特斯拉设计工作室以及贝弗利山庄上映，我们在这些场合都有面对面的交流。《霍乱时期的棒球》是一部关于海地霍乱爆发的纪录片，题材沉重但制作精良。马斯克对海地的关注由来已久，一年前的圣诞节，他便把礼物和苹果电脑MacBook Air塞满他的私人喷气式飞机运至海地当地的孤儿院。纪录片的副导演布林·穆瑟^{(Bryn Mooser)}告诉我，马斯克在拍摄过程中趁着烧烤的时间教会孩子们怎么发射模型火箭，随后便坐着独木舟深入丛林探访更偏远的村落。

After the screening, Musk and I hung out on the street for a bit away from the crowd. I noted aloud that everyone wants to make him out as the Tony Stark character but that he didn't really exude that “playboy drinking scotch while zooming through Afghanistan in an army convoy” vibe. He fired back, pointing to the Haitian canoe ride. “I got wasted, too, on some drink they call the Zombie,” Musk said. He smiled and then invited me to grab some drinks across the street at Mr. Chow to celebrate the movie. All seemed to be going well for Musk, and he savored the moment.

放映会结束以后，马斯克和我到街上散步暂时躲开人群。我开玩笑道：“人们都乐意把你看成钢铁侠一样的角色，但其实你并没有散发出那种‘一边喝着苏格兰威士忌，一边随着军车横扫阿富汗’的纨绔子弟气质。”他反驳说自己也有放纵不羁的时候，“我在海地乘独木舟的时候喝着当地称作‘僵尸’的鸡尾酒，结果烂醉如泥。”随后他笑着邀请我到马路对面名为“周先生”的酒馆继续饮酒交谈。可以看出来他的事业正如沐春风，而他此刻也在享受成功带来的喜悦。

This restful period did not last long and soon enough Tesla's battle for survival resumed. The company could only produce about ten sedans per week at the outset and had thousands of back orders that it needed to fulfill. Short sellers, those investors who bet a company's share price will fall, had taken huge positions in Tesla, making it the most shorted stock out of one hundred of the largest companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange. The naysayers expected numerous Model S flaws to crop up and undermine the enthusiasm for the car, to the point that people started canceling their orders in bulk.

但这样的轻松时刻并没有持续多久，特斯拉很快便再次陷入了事关生死存亡的搏斗中。在初始阶段，特斯拉每周的产能只有10辆小轿车，远远不足以应付数以万计的庞大订单。那些通过赌公司股价下跌从而赚取差价的卖空者开始对特斯拉发起猛攻，瞬间让特斯拉成为纳斯达克交易所上市排名前100家企业里被卖空最严重的一家。特斯拉认为，Model S的问题会如雨后春笋般地出现，这样的负面言论对消费者的信心造成不小的打击，人们开始纷纷取消订单。

There were also huge doubts that Tesla could ramp up production in a meaningful way and do so profitably. In October 2012, the presidential hopeful Mitt Romney dubbed Tesla “a loser,” while slagging off a couple of other government-backed green technology companies (the solar panel maker Solyndra and Fisker) during a debate with Barack Obama.

反对者们还质疑特斯拉能否大幅度提高产能并同时创造盈利。2012年10月，总统候选人米特·罗姆尼在对阵巴拉克·奥巴马的辩论时，为了抨击政府大力扶持的新能源汽车行业，揶揄太阳能电池板制造商索林佐和菲斯克，还谑称特斯拉为“失败者”。

While the doubters placed huge wagers on Tesla's impending failure, Musk's bluster mode engaged. He began talking about Tesla's goals to become the most profitable major automobile maker in the world, with better margins than BMW. Then, in September 2012, he unveiled something that shocked both Tesla critics and proponents alike. Tesla had secretly been building the first leg of a network of charging stations. The company disclosed the location of six stations in California, Nevada, and Arizona and promised that hundreds more would be on the way.

反对者们不惜重金为特斯拉的没落下注，马斯克也不甘示弱，气势汹汹地高调应战，并首次提出特斯拉的目标是成为比宝马更畅销、拥有更大盈利空间的汽车制造商。2012年9月，马斯克宣布的一则消息让反对者和支持们同样震惊：特斯拉秘密计划建造充电站网络，并已经开始初步施工。特斯拉披露了位于加州、内华达州和亚利桑那州的6个充电站位置，并承诺建造上千个类似的站点。

Tesla intended to build a global charging network that would let Model S owners making long drives pull off the highway and recharge very quickly. And they would be able to do so for free. In fact, Musk insisted that Tesla owners would soon be able to travel across the United States without spending a penny on fuel. Model S drivers would have no trouble finding these stations, not only because the cars' onboard computers would guide them to the nearest one but because Musk and von Holzhausen had designed giant red and white monoliths to herald the appearance of the stations.

特斯拉要在全球建造充电网络，好让Model S的用户们可以在长途驾驶过程中下了高速公路便能免费给座驾迅速充电。马斯克甚至坚决主张特斯拉要建造遍布全美的充电网，如此一来，用户们可以完成穿越全美的旅行而不花费一分油费。Model S的司机们可以轻而易举地找到这些充电站，因为车内配置的电脑会自动导航到最近的充电站位置，用户很容易就能看到马斯克和冯·霍兹豪森设计的巨型红白相间的充电站。

The Supercharging stations, as Tesla called them, represented a huge investment for the strapped company. An argument could easily be made that spending money on this sort of thing at such a precarious moment in the Model S and Tesla's history was somewhere between daft and batshit crazy. Surely Musk did not have the gall to try to revamp the very idea of the automobile and build an energy network at the same time with a budget equivalent to what Ford and ExxonMobil spend on their annual holiday parties. But that was the exact plan. Musk, Straubel, and others inside Tesla had mapped out this all-or-nothing play long ago and built certain features into the Model S with the Superchargers in mind.*

这些特斯拉超级充电站造价昂贵，对于这个深陷财务危机的企业来说可谓雪上加霜，在这个生死存亡的节点上考虑这样锦上添花的事情在旁人看来无疑是愚蠢，甚至荒谬的。即使是马斯克也没有胆量凭空捏造出一个能源网站计划，以颠覆传统的汽车制造产业，尤其是当他手上的预算还不足以支付福特汽车或者艾克森石油公司举办年度派对的费用时。事实上，这一切早在特斯拉野心勃勃的计划当中，特斯拉的核心成员，包括马斯克、斯特劳贝尔在早期便决定要义无反顾地朝着自建充电网的方向发展，特斯拉汽车的许多机械结构都是围绕着这个目标设计的。^[11]

While the arrival of the Model S and the charging network garnered Tesla a ton of headlines, it remained unclear if the positive press and good vibes would last. Serious trade-offs had been made as Tesla rushed to get the Model S to market. The car had some spectacular, novel features. But everyone inside of the company knew that as far as luxury sedans went, the Model S did not match up feature to feature with cars from BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The first few thousand Model S cars, for example, would ship without the parking sensors and radar-assisted cruise control common on other high-end cars. “It was either hire a team of fifty people right away to make one of these things happen or implement things as best and as fast as you could,” Javidan said.

Model S的横空出世和打造充电网消息的发布让特斯拉一时占尽风头，但特斯拉的前景仍不明朗，因为特斯拉为了尽早推出Model S做了很多必要的妥协。诚然，Model S有众多别出心裁的新卖点，但实际上所有特斯拉内部员工都清楚，若与竞争对手宝马和奔驰的同类型座驾相提并论，Model S的各项性能在逐项对比中皆略逊一筹。比如第一批产出的Model S并没有自带的倒车感应系统和雷达自动巡航系统，而这些设备早已被同类高端汽车视为不可或缺的标准配置。“当时只有两个选择：一是立马聘请50人的团队去实现这些功能，二是利用现有的团队以最高的效率出货。”

The subpar fit and finish also proved hard to explain. The early adopters could tolerate a windshield wiper going haywire for a couple of days, but they wanted to see seats and visors that met the $100,000 price tag. While Tesla did its best to source the highest-quality materials, it struggled at times to convince the top suppliers to take the company seriously.“People were very suspect that we would deliver one thousand Model Ss,” said von Holzhausen. “It was frustrating because we had the drive internally to make the car perfect but could not get the same commitment externally. With something like the visor, we ended up having to go to a third-rate supplier and then work on fixing the situation after the car had already started shipping.” The cosmetic issues, though, were minor compared to a tumultuous set of internal circumstances, revealed in detail here for the first time, that threatened to bankrupt the company once again.

但事实证明，Model S的组装和做工也没有达到理想的水准。早期的用户也许可以忍受雨刷器出几天故障，但他们有理由相信座椅和遮阳板这样的重要部件会对得起特斯拉10万美元的标价。尽管特斯拉尽全力找到顶级的供应商，但后者不一定会认真对待特斯拉这样的小客户。冯·霍兹豪森说，“大家都在质疑我们能否交付1 000辆Model S轿车，而令人沮丧的是，尽管我们自己有这样的魄力和信心，但我们很难调动起外包服务公司的积极性。就遮阳板来说，我们为了保证进度必须退而求其次，选择了三流厂商，产生的问题只能在发货后亡羊补牢。”实际上，此时公司内部正潜伏着巨大的危机，甚至差一点又把特斯拉推向破产的边缘，而外观上的不完美与之相比简直微不足道。本书将首次奉上此次事件的详细报道。

Musk had hired George Blankenship, a former Apple executive, to run its stores and service-center operations. At Apple, Blankenship worked just a couple of doors down from Steve Jobs and received credit for building much of the Apple Store strategy. When Tesla first hired Blankenship, the press and public were atwitter, anticipating that'd he do something spectacular and at odds with the traditions of the automotive industry.

马斯克聘请前苹果高管乔治·布兰肯希普^{(George Blankenship)}来运营实体店和服务中心。乔治·布兰肯希普在苹果工作时的办公室距离史蒂夫·乔布斯的只有几步之遥，地位之高可想而知，他的战绩主要在于打造苹果实体店的运营战略。媒体和大众对乔治·布兰肯希普的加入都抱有很高的期望，认为他会大展拳脚为特斯拉打开销售新局面，有力地冲击传统汽车行业销售的思维定式。

Blankenship did some of that. He expanded Tesla's number of stores throughout the world and imbued them with that Apple Store vibe. Along with showcasing the Model S, the Tesla stores sold hoodies and hats and had areas in the back where kids would find crayons and Tesla coloring books.

而一段时间之后大家发现，乔治·布兰肯希普的表现中规中矩，仅在一定程度上完成了职责。他的功劳在于增加了特斯拉门店数量，并且成功沿袭了苹果实体店简洁摩登的科技感。特斯拉门店里展示着Model S轿车的同时，还售卖卫衣、帽子等周边商品，最里面还设置了提供蜡笔和绘图本的儿童专区。

Blankenship gave me a tour of the Tesla store on Santana Row, the glitzy shopping center in San Jose. He came off as a warm, grandfatherly sort who saw Tesla as his chance to make a difference. “The typical dealer wants to sell you a car on the spot to clear inventory off his lot,” Blankenship said. “The goal here is to develop a relationship with Tesla and electric vehicles.” Tesla, he said, wanted to turn the Model S into more than a car. Ideally it would be an object of desire just like the iPod and iPhone. Blankenship noted that Tesla had more than ten thousand reservations for the Model S at the time, the vast majority of which had arrived without the customers test-driving the car. A lot of this early interest resulted from the aura surrounding Musk, who Blankenship said came off as similar to Jobs but with a toned-down control-freak vibe. “This is the first place I have worked that is going to change the world,” Blankenship said, taking a jab at the sometimes trivial nature of Apple's gadgets.

乔治·布兰肯希普带我参观了特斯拉位于桑塔纳街^{(圣何塞一条著名的高端商业街)}的门店，并展现出如祖父般慈祥亲切的一面。他把这次任职特斯拉看成让自己在行业内名留青史的机会。“典型的汽车经销商会为了清理库存而希望你在现场就付钱买车，但特斯拉的销售理念不一样，我们希望和潜在客户建立关系，让他们更深入地了解电动汽车与特斯拉文化。”他说特斯拉的理念是把Model S打造成一个人们趋之若鹜的身份象征，就像iPod和iPhone一样，拥有一辆特斯拉的价值将远远高于拥有一辆座驾本身。布兰肯希普说，“这是我第一次真正在一家能改变世界的企业工作”，同时揶揄苹果电子产品太零碎且小家子气。布兰肯希普留意到在10 000多个预约前来看车的人当中只有极少数要求试车，早期的许多来访者是因为敬仰马斯克慕名前来。布兰肯希普认为，这样的个人崇拜跟当年乔布斯的现象很相似，只是马斯克的形象没有乔布斯那样极端偏执。

While Musk and Blankenship got along at first, their relationship fell apart during the latter stages of 2012. Tesla did have a large number of reservations in which people put down $5,000 for the right to buy a Model S and get in the purchase queue. But the company had struggled to turn these reservations into actual sales. The reasons behind this problem remain unclear. It may have been that the complaints about the interior and the early kinks mentioned on the Tesla forums and message boards were causing concerns. Tesla also lacked financing options to soften the blow of buying a $100,000 car, while uncertainty surrounded the resale market for the Model S. You might end up with the car of the future or you might spend six figures on a dud with a battery pack that loses its capacity, and with no secondary buyer.

马斯克和布兰肯希普初期的合作无间没有持续多久，发展至2012年年末，两人的不和已经昭然若揭。特斯拉确实有大量潜在的卖家前来看车，他们甚至甘愿支付5 000美元高价获得排队购买权。尽管特斯拉表面上人气高涨，实际上转化率却极低，并且原因不明。一部分原因可能是网络论坛针对车内设计瑕疵等初期问题的批评导致消费者信心不足，另一部分原因是特斯拉在Model S二手车市场不明朗的情况下，不提供分期付款的方式以缓解购置10万美元座驾带来的巨大经济压力。现阶段购买Model S的用户实在承担了不小的风险，他们有可能幸运地购置了来自未来的炫酷座驾，也有可能买了一块漏电的废铁，而且没有转让的可能。

Tesla's service centers at the time were also terrible. The early cars were unreliable and customers were being sent in droves to centers unprepared to handle the volume. Many prospective Tesla owners likely wanted to hang out on the sidelines for a bit longer to make sure that the company would remain viable. As Musk put it, “The word of mouth on the car sucked.”

早期的Model S轿车常常会因为发生故障而被成批地运往服务中心，但特斯拉当时的维修系统尚未完善，遇到如此高的返修率一时难以应对。因此许多潜在的客户持观望态度，希望等产品质量稳定了再做购买决定。正如马斯克所说：“我们当时的口碑糟糕透了。”

By the middle of February 2013, Tesla had fallen into a crisis state. If it could not convert its reservations to purchases quickly, its factory would sit idle, costing the company vast amounts of money. And if anyone caught wind of the factory slowdown, Tesla's shares would likely plummet, prospective owners would become even more cautious, and the short sellers would win. The severity of this problem had been hidden from Musk, but once he learned about it, he acted in his signature all-or-nothing fashion. Musk pulled people from recruiting, the design studio, engineering, finance, and wherever else he could find them and ordered them to get on the phone, call people with reservations, and close deals. “If we don't deliver these cars, we are fucked,” Musk told the employees. “So, I don't care what job you were doing. Your new job is delivering cars.”

情况愈演愈烈，直到2013年2月中旬，特斯拉已经身临危机四伏之境。如果特斯拉无法改变现状，提高成交量，那么工厂将被迫停产，白白耗费巨额资金。一旦工厂生产进度放慢的消息流传出去，特斯拉的股价必定会大幅下滑，对消费者的信心造成重大的打击，卖空特斯拉的投资者将在特斯拉的没落中大赚一笔。马斯克此前对于停滞不前的销售状况一无所知，当听到此消息时马上采取了他惯有的破釜沉舟的态度，勒令所有员工，无论正在什么岗位从事什么职务，都必须拿起电话充当销售业务员的角色去推销产品。马斯克告诫员工道：“如果我们无法把这些车辆尽快销售出去，我们就彻底完蛋了。我不在乎你之前的职务是什么，现在你的新工作是销售汽车。”

He placed Jerome Guillen, a former Daimler executive, in charge of fixing the service issues. Musk fired senior leaders whom he deemed subpar performers and promoted a flood of junior people who had been doing above-average work. He also made an announcement personally guaranteeing the resale price of the Model S. Customers would be able to resell their cars for the average going rate of similar luxury sedans with Musk putting his billions behind this pledge. And then Musk tried to orchestrate the ultimate fail-safe for Tesla just in case his maneuvers did not work.

与此同时，马斯克解雇了许多表现平平的高层领导，并提拔了许多业绩显著的新人。他把戴姆勒前高管杰伦姆·桂伦^{(Jerome Guillen)}任命为售后主管，专门解决目前服务业务的诸多问题。除了内部施压，马斯克对外也做出了强有力的舆论引导。他在一则声明里以个人名誉和亿万美元担保二手Model S的售价会与同类型的奢侈轿车旗鼓相当。为了保证万无一失，马斯克除了实施以上策略，还为特斯拉留了最后一个撒手锏。

During the first week of April, Musk reached out to his friend Larry Page at Google. According to people familiar with their discussion, Musk voiced his concerns about Tesla's ability to survive the next few weeks. Not only were customers failing to convert their reservations to orders at the rate Musk hoped, but existing customers had also started to defer their orders as they heard about upcoming features and new color choices. The situation got so bad that Tesla had to shut down its factory. Publicly, Tesla said it needed to conduct maintenance on the factory, which was technically true, although the company would have soldiered on had the orders been closing as expected. Musk explained all of this to Page and then struck a handshake deal for Google to acquire Tesla.

4月的第一个星期，马斯克向好友拉里·佩奇^{(谷歌的创始人之一)}求助。据知悉内情的人员透露，马斯克曾向佩奇坦言担忧特斯拉不能撑过接下来的几个星期，因为不但特斯拉的销量没有增加，连原来想买车的用户也因为得知将有新的功能和颜色推出而迟迟不下订单。事情演化到了特斯拉不得不关闭工厂的地步了。特斯拉给出的官方说法是工厂需要检修，虽然这样的说法有一定真实性，但假如销售额如期上涨，那么马斯克一定会坚持让工厂保持运作状态。马斯克向佩奇解释了事情的来龙去脉，两人私底下拟订了谷歌收购特斯拉的方案。

While Musk did not want to sell, the deal seemed like the only viable course for Tesla's future. Musk's biggest fear about an acquisition was that the new owner would not see Tesla's goals through to their conclusion. He wanted to make sure that the company would end up producing a mass-market electric vehicle. Musk proposed terms under which he would remain in control of Tesla for eight years or until it started pumping out a mass-market car. Musk also asked for access to $5 billion in capital for factory expansions. Some of Google's lawyers were put off by these demands, but Musk and Page continued to talk about the deal. Given Tesla's value at the time, it was thought that Google would need to pay about $6 billion for the company.

马斯克当然并不希望出售特斯拉，但是为了让公司继续生存下去，在当时看来似乎别无他法。马斯克最担心的是新东家不能完成他最初为特斯拉设置的高远目标——成为一家有能力大规模生产电动汽车的伟大公司。马斯克提出了几项条款来确保特斯拉向着他希望的方向发展，包括对特斯拉拥有至少8年的绝对控制权，或者直到特斯拉能自主量产畅销型电动汽车为止，并要求投入50亿美元资金用于扩张工厂。谷歌的律师们对这些条款不以为然，但佩奇和马斯克的谈判没有因此终止。根据当时特斯拉的估值，谷歌要收购特斯拉大约需要支付60亿美元。

As Musk, Page, and Google's lawyers debated the parameters of an acquisition, a miracle happened. The five hundred or so people whom Musk had turned into car salesmen quickly sold a huge volume of cars. Tesla, which only had a couple weeks of cash left in the bank, moved enough cars in the span of about fourteen days to end up with a blowout first fiscal quarter. Tesla stunned Wall Street on May 8, 2013, by posting its first-ever profit as a public company—$11 million—on $562 million in sales. It delivered 4,900 Model S sedans during the period. This announcement sent Tesla's shares soaring from about $30 a share to $130 per share in July.

正当马斯克与佩奇以及谷歌律师们为收购而周旋，一个奇迹降临改变了特斯拉的命运。被马斯克强行转变为销售人员的500名员工出其不意地超额完成了预计的成交量，仅仅14天前银行存款仅够存活不足一个月的特斯拉终于悬崖勒马，扭亏为盈。向公众交付的第一季度财报显示，这是一家呈爆炸型增长趋势的企业。2013年5月8日，特斯拉便公布了562亿美元的交易额和高达1 100万美元的盈利，这是特斯拉上市以来的首次盈利。这个振奋人心的消息让特斯拉的平均股价在两个月内从30美元飙升至130美元。

Just a couple of weeks after revealing the first-quarter results, Tesla paid off its $465 million loan from the government early and with interest. Tesla suddenly appeared to have vast cash reserves at its disposal, and the short sellers were forced to take massive losses. The solid performance of the stock increased consumers' confidence, creating a virtuous circle for Tesla. With cars selling and Tesla's value rising, the deal with Google was no longer necessary, and Tesla had become too expensive to buy. The talks with Google ended.*

突如其来的现金流让特斯拉得以大展身手，在交付第一季度财报的几周后，特斯拉便连本带利地还清了4.65亿美元的政府贷款，其在证券市场上的稳健表现也让消费者信心大增，而不看好特斯拉、恶意卖空的投资者们则被迫接受巨额损失。特斯拉的销量随着估值蒸蒸日上，发展步入正轨，与谷歌关于收购的谈判也就此终止了，一来特斯拉不再迫切地需要资金注入，二来特斯拉的估值此时已经高于谷歌所能承受的价格范围。^[12]

What transpired next was the Summer of Musk. Musk put his public relations staff on high alert, telling them that he wanted to try to have one Tesla announcement per week. The company never quite lived up to that pace, but it did issue statement after statement. Musk held a series of press conferences that addressed financing for the Model S, the construction of more charging stations, and the opening of more retail stores. During one announcement, Musk noted that Tesla's charging stations were solar-powered and had batteries on-site to store extra juice. “I was joking that even if there's some zombie apocalypse, you'll still be able to travel throughout the country using the Tesla Supercharger system,” Musk said, setting the bar very high for CEOs at other automakers. But the biggest event by far was held in Los Angeles, where Tesla unveiled another secret feature of the Model S.

随着销售奇迹出现，特斯拉迎来了“马斯克之夏”，整个夏天关于马斯克与特斯拉的消息传闻不绝于耳，这当然也是马斯克带领的团队通力合作的结果。这段时间公关团队精神高度紧绷，为了配合马斯克的要求一周发布一则特斯拉的消息，尽管让团队应接不暇，但发送消息的频率密集且从未间断。在其中一个公告里，马斯克指出充电站将通过太阳能发电，并且在充电站会有可充电的电池出售。马斯克笑着说道，“我常开玩笑说即使是僵尸来袭，末日降临，人们都可以凭借特斯拉的超级充电站穿越国境。”如此一来，特斯拉的存在提高了现有汽车行业的普遍标准。在这些频繁的更新迭代中，有一则消息最令人震惊，这个隐藏在Model S中的秘密武器终于在洛杉矶的一次发布会上公之于众。

In June 2013, Tesla cleared the prototype vehicles out of its Los Angeles design studio and invited Tesla owners and the media for a flashy evening soiree. Hundreds of people showed up, driving their pricey Model S sedans through the grungy streets of Hawthorne and parking in between the design studio and the SpaceX factory. The studio had been converted into a lounge. The lighting was dim, and the floor had been covered in AstroTurf and tiered to make plateaus where people could mingle or plop down on couches. Women in tight black dresses cruised through the crowd, serving drinks. Daft Punk's “Get Lucky” played on the sound system. A stage had been built at the front of the room, but before Musk ascended it he mingled with the masses. It was clear that he had become a rock star for Tesla owners—every bit the equivalent of Steve Jobs for the Apple faithful. People surrounded him and asked to take pictures. Meanwhile, Straubel stood off to the side, often totally alone.

2013年6月，特斯拉邀请了部分重要用户和媒体人前来洛杉矶的设计工作室参加一场奢华的晚宴，成百上千人驾驶他们昂贵的Model S轿车穿越脏乱的霍桑街头来到会场，设计工作室和SpaceX工厂之间的过道停满了特斯拉制造的汽车。此时设计室里的原型车被清空了，取而代之的是会所风格的装潢，灯光调暗，地板铺上高档草皮，将区域分出层次让客人可以轻松碰面交流或坐躺休息，统一穿着紧身小黑裙的女服务生端着酒盘穿梭在人群里，音响里传出蠢朋克^{(Daft Punk)}乐队的著名歌曲《走运》。马斯克在登上临时搭建的舞台之前一直在台下和大家交流互动，很明显，此刻的他已在特斯拉用户心目中拥有同摇滚明星一般的地位，不断被要求合照，受到正如当时苹果粉丝对乔布斯的拥戴。

After people had a couple of drinks, Musk fought through the crowd to the front of the room, where old TV commercials projected onto a screen above the stage showed families stopping by Esso and Chevron stations. The kids were so happy to see the Esso tiger mascot. “Gas is a weird thing to love,” Musk said. “Honestly.” That's when he brought a Model S up onstage. A hole opened up in the floor beneath the car. It had been possible all along, Musk said, to replace the battery pack underneath the Model S in a matter of seconds—the company just hadn't told anyone about this. Tesla would now start adding battery swapping at its charging stations as a quicker option to recharging. Someone could drive right over a pit where a robot would take off the car's battery pack and install a new one in ninety seconds, at a cost equivalent to filling up with a tank of gas. “The only decision that you have to make when you come to one of our Tesla stations is do you prefer faster or free,” Musk said.*

而斯特劳贝尔则形单影只地站在一旁，与人群中饮酒畅谈的马斯克形成鲜明对比。几轮酒席过后，马斯克穿越人群走到台前，预先录制的宣传片放映着一家大小经过埃索和雪佛兰加油站的场景，孩子们正为见到埃索的老虎吉祥物兴高采烈。“说实话，人们对石油的喜爱实在难以理解。”马斯克话音刚落，一台Model S轿车从地下缓缓升上舞台。此时马斯克向大家公布了一则特斯拉一直保密的惊人消息：原来Model S车底的电池是可以拆卸替换的。特斯拉将在充电站销售充满电的电池，当用户把车停在指定位置，机器人会自动在90秒内完成旧电池拆卸和新电池安装。马斯克说，“当你需要为车充电时，你只需要在快速和免费之间做出选择。”^[13]

In the months that followed, a couple of events threatened to derail the Summer of Musk. The New York Times penned a withering review of the car and its charging stations, and a couple of the Model S sedans caught fire after being involved in collisions. Disobeying conventional public relations wisdom, Musk went after the reporter, using data pulled from the car to undermine the reviewer's claims. Musk penned the feisty rebuttal himself, while on vacation in Aspen with Kimbal, and friend and Tesla board member Antonio Gracias. “At some other company, it would be a public relations group putting something like this together,” Gracias said. “Elon felt like it was the most important problem facing Tesla at the time and that's always what he deals with and how he prioritizes. It could kill the car and represented an existential threat against the business. Have there been moments where his unconventional style in these types of situations has made me cringe? Yes. But I trust that it will work out in the end.”

但“马斯克之夏”并非毫无插曲，在接下来的那几个月里面发生的几件事情差一点让特斯拉的发展受阻，比如说《纽约时报》发表了一篇针对汽车和充电站的负面评论，以及几起特斯拉汽车相撞起火事件的报道。马斯克的应对方式与传统危机公关的做法背道而驰，他亲自撰写论证严谨的文章反驳写负面评论的媒体人，运用大量真实的汽车数据来攻击对方缺少数据支撑的论点，而此时马斯克正在阿斯彭度假，同行的友人包括金巴尔和特斯拉董事会成员安东尼奥·格雷西亚斯。“在其他公司，这样的事情可能会由整个公关部门去应对，但马斯克认为这是关于特斯拉生死存亡的大事，理应优先亲自处理，这是他一贯的思维方式。当然，他这样的行事作风有时让我手心捏一把汗，但以他的方式一切问题最后总会迎刃而解，这点我深信不疑。”

马斯克在发布会上承诺，2013年年末会建成首批提供快速电池更换的充电站，但实际上，特斯拉在发布会过去一年后仍然没有建成这样的充电站。马斯克对此给出的解释是当时特斯拉有更重要的事情有待解决。“我们必定会信守诺言，有时候可能因为客观原因不能马上兑现，但总有一天我们会做到所承诺的事情。”

Musk applied a similar approach to dealing with the fires by declaring the Model S the safest car in America in a press release and adding a titanium underbody shield and aluminum plates to the vehicle to deflect and destroy debris and keep the battery pack safe.

马斯克采取了相同的手段处理特斯拉汽车起火的报道，他召开了媒体大会，宣称Model S是全美最安全的汽车，并宣布将加入钛金属车底防护罩和铝制底盘以遮挡和清除撞击产生的碎片，从而保证电池组的绝对安全。

The fires, the occasional bad review—none of this had any effect on Tesla's sales or share price. Musk's star shone brighter and brighter as Tesla's market value ballooned to about half that of GM and Ford.

无论是起火事件还是负面评论，都对特斯拉的销售和股价毫发无损。马斯克的名气日益壮大，特斯拉股价格也直线飙升，其市值相当于通用汽车和福特汽车市值的一半。

Tesla held another press event in October 2014 that cemented Musk's place as the new titan of the auto industry. Musk unveiled a supercharged version of the Model S with two motors—one in the front and one in the back. It could go zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds. The company had turned a sedan into a supercar. “It's like taking off from a carrier deck,” Musk said. “It's just bananas.” Musk also unveiled a new suite of software for the Model S that gave it autopilot functions. The car had radar to detect objects and warn of possible collisions and could guide itself via GPS. “Later, you will be able to summon the car,” Musk said. “It will come to wherever you are. There's also something else I would like to do. Many of our engineers will be hearing this in real time. I would like the charge connector to plug itself into the car, sort of like an articulating snake. I think we will probably do something like that.”

2014年10月，又一场标志性媒体发布会的顺利举行奠定了他在汽车行业中不可替代的巨头地位。在会上，马斯克推出了增压式双引擎版Model S^{(双引擎分别位于汽车的前后部)}，汽车从静止状态加速至时速60英里仅仅需要3.2秒。马斯克自豪地说，“这个加速度快到能让汽车起飞了，简直不可思议。”特斯拉用这样傲人的数字证明，他们成功地把一辆普通轿车迭代成了豪华跑车。与此同时，马斯克宣布了一套全新Model S操控系统的诞生，通过雷达探测技术和GPS系统实现智能避障和自动导航功能。“在不久的将来，你的座驾便可以做到在一声令下随传随到。我还有很多其他想法想去尝试，我想做到让充电线自动插入汽车充电口，就像一条敏捷的蛇。工程师们很快就会接到我这个任务了。”

Thousands of people waited in line for hours to see Musk demonstrate this technology. Musk cracked jokes during the presentation and played off the crowd's enthusiasm. The man who had been awkward in front of media during the PayPal years had developed a unique, slick stagecraft. A woman standing next to me in the crowd went weak in the knees when Musk first took the stage. A man to my other side said he wanted a Model X and had just offered $15,000 to a friend to move up on the reservation list, so that he could end up with model No. 700. The enthusiasm coupled with Musk's ability to generate attention was emblematic of just how far the little automaker and its eccentric CEO had come. Rival car companies would kill to receive such interest and had basically been left dumbfounded as Tesla snuck up on them and delivered more than they had ever imagined possible.

成千上万的人聚集在一起听马斯克的演讲，并观看演示，马斯克也轻松幽默地和人群互动着，自如地调动起现场气氛。这个当年领导PayPal时面对媒体仍略显青涩的男人如今已蜕变成一个极具个人魅力、从容不迫的出色演讲者，站在我旁边的一位女士在马斯克登台的一瞬间激动得差点没站稳。站在我另外一边的男人告诉我，他打算买一辆Model X，为了使自己在等候名单上的排名再靠前一点，他刚刚花1.5万美元从一个朋友手中买下了序列号为700的Model X。此刻人群的狂热证明了这家初出茅庐的企业及其不拘一格的领导者已经成为大众心目中现象级的存在。特斯拉的竞争对手们为特斯拉短期内取得的成就惊羡不已，甚至开始担心特斯拉会在不久的将来超越他们。

As the Model S fever gripped Silicon Valley, I visited Ford's small research and development lab in Palo Alto. The head of the lab at the time was a ponytailed, sandal-wearing engineer named T. J. Giuli, who felt very jealous of Tesla. Inside of every Ford were dozens of computing systems made by different companies that all had to speak to each other and work as one. It was a mess of complexity that had evolved over time, and simplifying the situation would prove near impossible at this point, especially for a company like Ford, which needed to pump out hundreds of thousands of cars per year and could not afford to stop and reboot. 

正当特斯拉热潮在硅谷盛行时，我抽空参观了福特汽车位于帕洛阿尔托的一个小型研发实验室。当时实验室由扎着马尾辫、穿着拖鞋的工程师T·J·吉利^{(TJ Giuli)}领头，聊起特斯拉他显然充满嫉妒之心。每辆福特汽车里面都装有十几个不同厂家制造的电脑系统，均需要一一调试整合，这复杂的构造是福特汽车经过多年更新迭代遗留下来的结果，在短期内想去繁就简，可能需要停产整顿，而对于福特汽车这样生产压力巨大的汽车公司来说，停产整顿无疑不切实际。

Tesla, by contrast, got to start from scratch and make its own software the focus of the Model S. Giuli would have loved the same opportunity. “Software is in many ways the heart of the new vehicle experience,” he said. “From the powertrain to the warning chimes in the car, you're using software to create an expressive and pleasing environment. The level of integration that the software has into the rest of the Model S is really impressive. Tesla is a benchmark for what we do here.” Not long after this chat, Giuli left Ford to become an engineer at a stealth start-up.

与之相比，特斯拉的优势在于没有历史遗留的复杂问题，并从一开始就精准地抓住Model S的操控系统作为创新关键点进行研发，这样从零开始的机会是为福特汽车效力的吉利求之不得的。“软件逐渐成为新一代汽车体验的核心，无论是动力系统还是警报装置，都必须通过软件系统以适当的方式表达，而特斯拉在软件与硬件的有机结合上花了很多心思，造诣非凡，我们都以之为行业标杆。”此次谈话不久后，吉利便离开了福特汽车公司，在一家秘密启动的创业公司担任工程师。

There was little the mainstream auto industry could do to slow Tesla down. But that didn't stop executives from trying to be difficult whenever possible. Tesla, for example, wanted to call its third-generation car the Model E, so that its lineup of vehicles would be the Model S, E, and X—another playful Musk gag. But Ford's then CEO, Alan Mulally, blocked Tesla from using Model E, with the threat of a lawsuit.

主流汽车产业尽管对特斯拉的飞速发展无可奈何，但各大汽车企业高管还是抓住难得的机会刁难特斯拉。一个有趣的例子是，爱开玩笑的马斯克想玩个小把戏，把第三代汽车命名为Model E，这样三代产品的名称刚好能拼成“SEX”^(性)。福特汽车的执行总裁阿兰·穆拉里得知后想方设法加以阻拦，威胁要采取法律手段制止特斯拉如此命名。

“So I call up Mulally and I was like, ‘Alan, are you just fucking with us or are you really going to do a Model E?'” Musk said. “And I'm not sure which is worse. You know? Like it would actually make more sense if they're just fucking with us because if they actually come out with a Model E at this point, and we've got the Model S and the X and Ford comes out with the Model E, it's going to look ridiculous. So even though Ford did the Model T a hundred years ago, nobody thinks of ‘Model' as being a Ford thing anymore. So it would just feel like they stole it. Like why did you go steal Tesla's E? Like you're some sort of fascist army marching across the alphabet, some sort of Sesame Street robber. And he was like, ‘No, no, we're definitely going to use it.' And I was like, ‘Oh, I don't think that's such a good idea because people are going to be confused because it's not going to make sense. People aren't used to Ford having Model something these days. It's usually called like the Ford Fusion.' And he was like, no, his guys really want to use that. That's terrible.”

“我随即致电阿兰，我问他你是真心实意要生产Model E系列，还是只是想和我们对着干？”马斯克回忆道，“我不确定这两种可能性哪一种更愚蠢，相比之下，他们是为了阻挠我们而故意与我们作对的说法更加合情合理，因为我们已经生产了Model S和Model X，现在如果福特汽车推出Model E，会让人会感觉不伦不类，甚至有抄袭之嫌。即使福特在100多年前曾生产过Model T车型，但没有人会将Model系列与福特品牌联想到一起，只会觉得他们在跟风效仿特斯拉，福特这种跟我们抢字母的行径就像字母表界里的法西斯，或是《芝麻街》幼儿英语里的大盗。阿兰居然口口声声说，‘不，我们是真的想要用这个字母。’我直接告诉他这个主意不甚高明，因为大家习惯了福特给自己的车取Fusion之类的名字，如今改弦易张会让人摸不着头脑。但他一再坚持福特团队对Model E这个名字情有独钟。这实在是个滑稽的闹剧。”

After that, Tesla registered the trademark for Model Y as another joke. “In fact, Ford called us up deadpan and said, ‘We see you've registered Model Y. Is that what you're going to use instead of the Model E?'” Musk said. “I'm like, ‘No, it's a joke. S-E-X-Y. What does that spell?' But trademark law is a dry profession it turns out.”*

这次不甚欢愉的交谈过后，特斯拉抱着恶作剧的心态注册了Model Y。“福特马上很紧张地打电话问我们为什么要注册Y而不是E，我开玩笑地回应他们，‘我们要把产品线连成SEXY ^(性感)，你意下如何？’但事实上，我们很快便发现呆板的商标法并不认同我们的幽默感。”^[14]

What Musk had done that the rival automakers missed or didn't have the means to combat was turn Tesla into a lifestyle. It did not just sell someone a car. It sold them an image, a feeling they were tapping into the future, a relationship. Apple did the same thing decades ago with the Mac and then again with the iPod and iPhone. Even those who were not religious about their affiliation to Apple were sucked into its universe once they bought the hardware and downloaded software like iTunes.

马斯克做到了许多竞争对手错过了或者无法实现的创举，那便是使特斯拉成为一种生活方式。特斯拉卖的不仅仅是汽车，而是一种对未来的大胆想象，一种对科技创新的信任感，正如10年前苹果推出Mac电脑，以及日后的iPod和iPhone产品一样，除了苹果狂热支持者以外的普通消费者也会在买了苹果产品和下载iTunes等苹果软件后不可自拔地成为苹果生态圈里的一分子。

This sort of relationship is hard to pull off if you don't control as much of the lifestyle as possible. PC makers that farmed their software out to Microsoft, their chips to Intel, and their design to Asia could never make machines as beautiful and as complete as Apple's. They also could not respond in time as Apple took this expertise to new areas and hooked people on its applications.

如果没有对每一个细节的严格把关，很难实现与用户建立这样紧密的关系。比如个人电脑制造商常常把各环节分散外包，软件外包给微软，芯片交给英特尔，设计则来自亚洲的厂商，他们永远无法制造出像苹果电脑一样美观又功能齐全的产品。苹果可以做到把专业技能投入到开发大众喜爱的软件产品上，但传统的电脑商家是无法对此做出灵活反应的。

You can see Musk's embrace of the car as lifestyle in Tesla's abandonment of model years. Tesla does not designate cars as being 2014s or 2015s, and it also doesn't have “all the 2014s in stock must go, go, go and make room for the new cars” sales. It produces the best Model S it can at the time, and that's what the customer receives. This means that Tesla does not develop and hold on to a bunch of new features over the course of the year and then unleash them in a new model all at once. It adds features one by one to the manufacturing line when they're ready. Some customers may be frustrated to miss out on a feature here and there. Tesla, however, manages to deliver most of the upgrades as software updates that everyone gets, providing current Model S owners with pleasant surprises.

特斯拉出品的汽车系列并未采用2014年或2015年产的年份制，也没有“清空旧库存为新年份出产的车让位”这样的换季销售，这恰恰体现了马斯克把特斯拉打造成汽车生活品牌的决心。工程师在生产Model S的时候便毫无保留地注入了所有最先进的技术，交到买家手上的Model S集中了技术团队的全部心血和最佳技能。特斯拉没有向其他汽车公司一样把所有新功能统一集中在新一代产品中发售，而是在每项技术完善到可以市场化的时候便迫不及待地应用在当下流水线上的产品中。一些顾客会因为这样快速而零散的迭代错过某些更新，并因此感到沮丧。 但许多特斯拉的性能更新都能以软件更新的形式进行，令所有客户都能体验到最新的功能，这对现有客户来说是极大的惊喜。

For the Model S owner, the all-electric lifestyle translates into a less hassled existence. Instead of going to the gas station, you just plug the car in at night, a rhythm familiar to anyone with a smartphone. The car will start charging right away or the owner can tap into the Model S's software and schedule charging to take place late at night, when the cheapest electricity rates are available. Tesla owners not only dodge gas stations; they mostly get to skip out on visits to mechanics. A traditional vehicle needs oil and transmission fluid changes to deal with all the friction and wear and tear produced by its thousands of moving parts. The simpler electric car design eliminates this type of maintenance.

所有Model S的用户都因为拥有一辆纯电动汽车而优化了原有的生活方式，他们从此不再需要到处找加油站，只需要每天晚上回家把车插上电，这对于智能手机的用户来说已经是个习惯动作。只要一插上电源，车便开始充电，或者客户可以通过特斯拉的软件来选择夜间电费最便宜的时段充电。特斯拉一族不但得以躲开加油站，连拜访修理厂的功夫也可以省下了。传统汽车需要定期更换机油和传动液来应对几万个零件的日常磨损，但结构简洁的电动车设计不需要这样烦琐的汽车维护工序。

Both the Roadster and the Model S also take advantage of what's known as regenerative braking, which extends the life of the brakes. During stop-and-go situations, the Tesla will brake by kicking the motor into reverse via software and slowing down the wheels instead of using brake pads and friction to clamp them down. The Tesla motor generates electricity during this process and funnels it back to the batteries, which is why electric cars get better mileage in city traffic. Tesla still recommends that owners bring in the Model S once a year for a checkup but that's mostly to give the vehicle a once-over and make sure that none of the components seems to be wearing down prematurely.

与此同时，Roadster与Model S分别采用了再生制动技术以延长刹车系统的寿命。当需要急刹车时，特斯拉的刹车系统会自动改变发动机的转向从而使车轮减速。再生制动不但取代了传统的刹车片，不必通过摩擦力强制刹车，从而减少了轮胎损耗，此过程中产生的电能还可以回灌给电池充电，这也是电动车在拥堵的城市里比汽油车更实用的原因。为了确保万无一失，特斯拉仍建议车主为Model S进行年检，通常只是为了确认部件是否存在提前磨损现象。

Even Tesla's approach to maintenance is philosophically different from that of the traditional automotive industry. Most car dealers make the majority of their profits from servicing cars. They treat vehicles like a subscription service, expecting people to visit their service centers multiple times a year for many years. This is the main reason dealerships have fought to block Tesla from selling its cars directly to consumers.* “The ultimate goal is to never have to bring your car back in after you buy it,” said Javidan. The dealers charge more than independent mechanics but give people the peace of mind that their car is being worked on by a specialist for a particular make of vehicle. Tesla makes its profits off the initial sale of the car and then from some optional software services.

特斯拉对待维修的态度与传统汽车行业有根本性的不同。绝大多数的汽车经销商把汽车售卖视为定期盈利行为而非一次性销售行为，他们通过为车主提供每年多次的汽车维修服务赚取丰厚利润。出于这样的原因，经销商曾极尽其是地阻挠特斯拉直接面对客户的销售行为。^[15]贾维丹说：“我们的最终目标是在车卖出去以后便再也不需要对其进行维修。而经销商们则是通过返修和赚取零件的差价来获得利润，顾客为了避免麻烦也常常愿意支付额外的费用让经销商修车。而特斯拉的利润来自一次性的销售收入以及可供选择的收费软件服务。这是截然不同的服务理念。”

“I got the number ten Model S,” said Konstantin Othmer,17 the Silicon Valley software whiz and entrepreneur. “It was an awesome car, but it had just about every issue you might have read about in the forums. They would fix all these things and decided to trailer the car back to the shop so that they didn't add any miles to it. Then I went in for a one-year service, and they spruced up everything so that the car was better than new. It was surrounded by velvet ropes in the service center. It was just beautiful.”

“我购买的是特斯拉出产的第10辆Model S，”硅谷奇才企业家康斯坦丁·奥斯莫^{(Konstantin Othmer)}说，“这是一辆很棒的座驾，但是几乎所有论坛上提到的问题它都有。特斯拉的工作人员帮忙解决了所有问题，并且很贴心地叫来拖车运输，以便不增加行驶里程。在我一年后回去检修的时候，工程师们帮我把完成了所有调试更新，汽车焕然一新，比新买的时候性能更优越，在服务中心，车子被天鹅绒绳点缀着，看起来美极了。”17

Tesla's model isn't just about being an affront to the way carmakers and dealers do business. It's a more subtle play on how electric cars represent a new way to think of automobiles. All car companies will soon follow Tesla's lead and offer some form of over-the-air updates to their vehicles. The practicality and scope of their updates will be limited, however.

特斯拉这样的维修理念并不是要故意冒犯传统汽车制造商和经销商，而是旨在巧妙地开拓电动汽车发展的新思路。几乎所有的汽车公司在此后都纷纷效仿特斯拉，开始为顾客提供远程更新服务，但服务范围和操作便利程度与特斯拉的服务相去甚远。

“You just can't do an over-the-air sparkplug change or replacement of the timing belt,” said Javidan. “With a gas car, you have to get under the hood at some point and that forces you back to the dealership anyway. There's no real incentive for Mercedes to say, ‘You don't need to bring the car in,' because it's not true.”

“你永远无法远程更换火花塞或传送带，”贾维丹说，“要修理一辆汽油车你必须钻到汽车引擎盖下，或者将车运回经销商那里让他们代劳。奔驰汽车无论是出于利益考虑还是站在消费者角度考虑，都会要求客户把故障汽车运回厂里修理。”

Tesla also has the edge of having designed so many of the key components for its cars in-house, including the software running throughout the vehicle. “If Daimler wants to change the way a gauge looks, it has to contact a supplier half a world away and then wait for a series of approvals,” Javidan said. “It would take them a year to change the way the ‘P' on the instrument panel looks. At Tesla, if Elon decides he wants a picture of a bunny rabbit on every gauge for Easter, he can have that done in a couple of hours.”*

特斯拉还有一个很大的优势，即自主生产大多数重要的汽车组件和行车操作软件。“戴姆勒汽车如果要改变油量表的外观，就必须联系地球另一端的供应商，并经过漫长的审批流程，仅仅修改仪表板上P字母的写法可能就要花上他们一年时间。在特斯拉要做出改变轻而易举，如果马斯克想让每辆车的仪表板上都印上复活节兔子的图案，他在几个小时内就能见到所有成品。”^[16]

As Tesla turned into a star of modern American industry, its closest rivals were obliterated. Fisker Automotive filed for bankruptcy and was bought by a Chinese auto parts company in 2014. One of its main investors was Ray Lane, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Lane had cost Kleiner Perkins a chance to invest in Tesla and then backed Fisker—a disastrous move that tarnished the firm's brand and Lane's reputation. Better Place was another start-up that enjoyed more hype than Fisker and Tesla put together and raised close to $1 billion to build electric cars and battery-swapping stations.The company never produced much of anything and declared bankruptcy in 2013.

正当特斯拉的发展如日中天之时，其竞争对手却纷纷宣告破产。菲斯克汽车于2014年宣告破产后被一家中国汽车零件公司收购。菲斯克其中一个重要的投资人是来自凯鹏华盈的雷·莱恩^{(Ray Lane)}，正是因为莱恩，凯鹏华盈才最终选择了菲斯克而与特斯拉失之交臂，这为凯鹏华盈和莱恩个人的名声都带来了灾难性后果。Better Place^{(乐土公司)}是另外一家制造电动汽车与充^(换)电站的初创公司，其当初的人气甚至盖过菲斯克和特斯拉的总和，筹集了约10亿美元的资金，但最终却无法兑现当初许下的任何承诺，于2013年宣告破产。

The guys like Straubel who had been at Tesla since the beginning are quick to remind people that the chance to build an awesome electric car had been there all along. “It's not really like there was a rush to this idea, and we got there first,” Straubel said. “It is frequently forgotten in hindsight that people thought this was the shittiest business opportunity on the planet. The venture capitalists were all running for the hills.” What separated Tesla from the competition was the willingness to charge after its vision without compromise, a complete commitment to execute to Musk's standards.

斯特劳贝尔这类特斯拉元老级人物常常告诫大家，制造一辆电动汽车的机会一直存在，并没有最好的时机可言。这并不是一个大家趋之若鹜的新颖想法，而我们也并没有先发制人，捷足先登抢了风头。经历了特斯拉的成功过后，人们很容易忘记制造电动汽车从一开始就是一门不被看好的生意，风险投资人都不愿意投资这类项目，以免招来麻烦。让特斯拉得以领先对手的原因是团队有充足的能力和魄力，毫不妥协地执行马斯克提出的标准，分毫不差地达成当初设定的目标。

^[1]音响系统的音量自动设为11，这是向英国摇滚乐团Spinal Tap致敬，同时也是马斯克幽默感的体现。

^[2]Model S或其他电动车不仅能源效率比内燃车高3~4倍，他们还可以利用由发电厂或太阳能电池阵列以集中有效的方式提供的电力。

^[3]当第一辆Roadster跑车运抵时，它被装在一个巨大的板条箱里。特斯拉的工程师们粗暴地将箱子拆开，安装电池组，让马斯克开着它兜了一圈。大约20名特斯拉工程师跳进原型车里，组成车队，跟在马斯克后面绕着帕洛阿尔托和斯坦福兜了一圈。

^[4]“凯鹏华盈只想要一个傀儡CEO，”J·B·斯特劳贝尔说，“所以他们才会去投资菲斯克。整件事情都荒谬可笑，简直恬不知耻。”

^[5]在2007年年末到2008年年中这段时间里，马斯克也试图聘请托尼·法德尔加盟——苹果公司前CEO，他为人所知的成就是让iPod和iPhone成为现实。在法德尔的记中，特斯拉聘请他担任的是CEO，而马斯克则记得是首席运营官之类的职位。“埃隆和我就成为特斯CEO一事有过多次会面，他甚至在我前去办公室拜访时，为我准备了一个惊喜派对。”法德尔说道。史蒂夫·乔布斯听到了此类会面的风声，以他的人格魅力留住了法德尔。“他有一段时间对我很好。”法德尔说道。几年之后，法德尔离开苹果公司创建了Nest，这是一家智能家庭设备制造公司，于2014年被谷歌收购。

^[6]提交到能源部的财政拨款申请经过了数年^{(2007~2009年)}才开始有获得审批的希望。

^[7]这笔交易有两个方面：第一是特斯拉要继续生产可以为其他公司所用的电池组和相应的技术产品，第二是特斯拉生产自己的电动汽车时必须用美国本土汽车制造厂。

^[8]当初马斯克力排众议才得以把工厂定址加州。洛伊德说：“来自底特律的意见是工厂一定要设在工人们能安居乐业的地方。装配线上的工作不是一学就会的，而员工流动率增高必定导致严重的后果。”洛伊德调查数据时发现，加州本地电脑制造厂的人员流动率每年达1%，是传统汽车行业的10倍。马斯克回应道，既然SpaceX都能找到办法在洛杉矶制造火箭，那么特斯拉在北加州制造汽车也不是什么难题，结果马斯克的固执竟为公司带来了意外收获。

^[9]波音公司曾在此进行波音747的机身制造和喷漆工序，日后的特斯拉设计工作室机舱主题源于此。

^[10]投资人兼董事会成员史蒂芬·左维森说：“他^(马斯克)有意把场地定在最显眼的位置，这样一来，他在周末工作的时候别人都能看见他，并知道在哪里可以找到他。有时他故意在周末安排与供应商的电话会议，好让大家知道连他都以身作则，牺牲私人时间在工厂工作，其他人也应当效仿。”

^[11]特斯拉一开始采用的是笔记本电脑等大众消费品中常见的锂离子电池，因为这样可以迅速以较低的价格从亚洲的电池供应商手中购买现成的电池，并且这些电池还会持续完善。这个在条件有限的创业初期做出的理性选择在Roadster的早期销售阶段证实可行。但媒体偏偏抓住这个锂电池大作文章，消费者也对使用日常电子产品的电池驱动的汽车充满好奇。

这样大规模的媒体曝光以及外观上的相似度导致许多人到现在还以为特斯拉汽车用的是普通锂电池。实际上，特斯拉早已淘汰了这批外包生产的电池，在生产Roadster最后几款模型的时候，便开始与松下电器合作自主研发电池导电液，以便配合汽车高强度、高频率充泄电的需要。为了提升电池性能，特斯拉不但研发了新的电池液配方，还改进了电池模块的连接技术和降温技术，电池模块采取特殊的降温方式，配合循环流动于电池块的冷却液实现高效降温。特斯拉工厂电池模块的安装线并不对外界开放。

电池的化学物质、材质结构与模块设计都是一个大的系统整体的组成部分，并为同一个目标服务，那就是把充电速度提到最高。为了控制充电过程散发的热量，特斯拉设计了一个互相连接的散热器和冷却器，为电池和充电器同时降温。斯特劳贝尔说：“所有的硬件和软件操控系统及其他控制器同时以最高速度运转。”而结果是，Model S在充电站通过向电池输送高压直流电能，在20分钟内便能充满足够行使150英里的电量，相比之下，一辆日产Leaf汽车充满足够行使80英里的电所需时间长达8小时。

^[12]Google的律师曾要求给特斯拉的董事会做演示。在批准这项请求之前，马斯克要求向Google借贷的权利。因为如果在收购谈判公开之后，特斯拉在资金方面出现问题，他们没有其他募集资金的途径。Google为此犹豫了几周，而那时特斯拉已摆脱危机。

^[13]在演示之后，特斯拉在实现电池置换时困难重重。马斯克承诺最早几座充电站会在2013年年末投入使用。但是一年后，特斯拉连一座充电站也没有投入使用。根据马斯克的说法，公司需要解决更紧迫的问题。“既然说了，我们就会做。可能完成时间无法如我们所愿，但最终一定会完成的。”马斯克说道。

^[14]被问及Model S名字来源的时候，马斯克说：“我们命名但求实际直白，像Roadster一样，但苦于轿车^(Sedan)没有发音相近的好词，如果直称为特斯拉轿车则太无聊了。英国人习惯称轿车为沙龙^(Saloon)，可是这听上去像西部牛仔的语言一样不伦不类。我们有过很多想法，最终还是Model S略胜一筹。Model S不单意味着轿车^(Sedan)，还有隔空向福特的Model T致意的隐喻，如今的Model S承接当年的Model T，两者对于各自的社会都是具有跨时代意义的创新之作，遥相呼应，当然这个逻辑是倒推而得的。”

^[15]美国部分州级法律规定，汽车公司无权直接向消费者销售汽车，一些汽车经销商因此提起法律诉讼，以便阻止特斯拉直接面向消费者的销售行为。即便特斯拉在这些州的实体商店被关闭，但潜在的顾客们只要预约试车，特斯拉便会派专人把车送到顾客家门口，因此也无伤大雅。马斯克就此评论道：“有时候，一些小事情上大可做出让步，给别人也尝点甜头。长远来说，实体店的数量并不重要，能让特斯拉真正成长的是口碑，实体店不过是辅助病毒式传播的工具之一。”

^[16]正如斯特劳贝尔所言，“看着人们开着Model S穿越整个国家是一件激动人心的事情，因为这一壮举用其他任何座驾都无法实现。在大沙漠中建造充电站并非噱头，而是一个电动汽车业的里程碑，让我们真正意识到电动车前景充满无限可能。当我们发行第三代汽车的时候，这样的免费充电站将形成一张大网覆盖全球。”他说：“我非常不愿意听到别人把我们跟其他汽车公司做比较，诚然，我们的主要产品是汽车，但我们同时是一家能源公司和科技公司。我们正在到处和煤矿公司商谈利用再生资源构造汽车部件，我们接下来要把所有制造电动车产品的组件商业化。”