文/郭海惟
“果链”接班人？
在建厂之初，无论是产业链、政策观察者，还是马斯克及各级投资者们，都对特斯拉的产业效率抱有极高的期待。
对于特斯拉来说，包邮区是“产能天堂”，它可以在最短的时间内，为这家曾经困于供应链的初创汽车公司提供最全面的零件配套和解决方案。
而对于产业链来说，特斯拉庞大且快速增长的订单量、马斯克硅谷极客的人设、电车新兴的智能产业属性，让几乎所有人都能立马想起，那个名叫史蒂夫·乔布斯的人，曾经在十多年前给我国沿海创业者带来的巨大财富。
那是一个足以把一批草根创业者直接送上福布斯榜单的时代机遇，而在机遇中或被成就、或被抛弃的人，都因为它被冠上了一个共同的名字：
“果链”。
在过去十年中，果链像一个神秘的标签，成为3C制造业财富的象征。
他们一度在A股市场拥有着像立讯精密、蓝思科技、歌尔股份等被股民们耳熟能详的千亿市值企业。而他们共同的特点便是被成于苹果，又依赖于苹果——超过70%的收入一度都来自于加州苹果公园的订单。
粗略统计，苹果全家桶每年为全球各地各级别的下游产业链提供1000亿美元硬件订单价值，其中相当一部分零件业务流向了东亚的供应链体系。在巅峰时期，仅A股“果链三傻”，合计市值规模就近万亿。而即便在3C制造褪色的今天，“苹果概念”这四个字，依然圈下了2万亿规模的上市公司。
而现在，特斯拉正在产值上赶超苹果。
华尔街预计，特斯拉今年将在全球范围内提供700亿美元的制造价值，而如果一切顺利，在未来两三年还将进一步内翻倍——最终超越苹果，成为硅谷最大的硬件价值提供者。
而在销量翻倍的背后，或许也意味着马斯克将取代苹果，成为硅谷链接中国制造业的新代言人。
事实上，特斯拉对中国制造业的积极性，或许也是硅谷少有的。
如果按照iPhone产销的发展时间来对比，深耕电动汽车十多年的特斯拉，正在自己的“iPhone4时刻”。更亲民的车型，正在让特斯拉以前所未有的速度进行销量爬坡。
而如果仅从产值上来看，上海临港工厂每年1500亿人民币的规模，也同样与苹果2012年的硬件价值相当。而无论是目前的45万辆产能，还是在二期规划的翻倍产能，都足以让这个工厂成为全国、乃至未来全球最大的单体汽车工厂。
目前唯一与之可比的外资/民营工厂，大概是郑州富士康。作为iPhone全球最重要的生产基地，郑州富士康旗下的30万员工在2020年出口了超2000亿人民币的3C产品。不过与临港工厂不同，郑州富士康实际上是由分布在三个区多厂共同组成的集合体，也手机制造只是其业务之一。
庞大且快速增长的产值规模，还不足以说明马斯克对于中国的“热忱”，特斯拉还进一步对于“本土化”持有积极的态度。
2021年其官方明确表示，未来在上海工厂将实现100%国产化率。
尽管其中的100%国产化率的界定，实际指区位意义上的本土化率，并非指本土公司。但这对于硅谷来说，依然是一个积极且罕见的表态。对于多年前在爱恨苹果中不断反复挣扎的果链企业来说，这更是可遇不可求的姿态。
从各个角度来看，特斯拉无论从实力、意愿，还是长相上来看，似乎都正在成为“果链”的最佳继承人。
图源：特斯拉官网
隐身的“特链”
那么，特斯拉可能会像很多期许的那样，效仿“果链”开启下一个“特链奇迹”吗？
答案或许是复杂的。
从数值上来看，特斯拉背后的产业链公司，的确是非常庞大的。如果将A股市场的“苹果概念”和“特斯拉概念”进行对比，会发现其实特斯拉产业链当中的企业价值已经远超过苹果产业链。
“特斯拉概念股”拥有193家企业，合计4万亿人民币市值；“苹果概念股”则拥有105家企业，合计2万亿人民币市值。
但如果我们仔细观察公司的结构，会发现特斯拉背后牵扯的产业链以及公司规模虽然庞大，但大多都是特斯拉的“普通朋友”并有较强的行业内“头部效应”，其中不乏宁德时代、隆基股份、福耀玻璃等超高市值的成熟龙头企业。
换言之，特斯拉在其中并不占据主导地位。
如果以“果链”要求来看“特链”，这意味着真正能称为“特链”公司并不多。以2021财年数据为例，特斯拉营收占比30%以上的公司，A股其实只有两家：
拓普集团、旭升股份。
而如果把占比标准提升到50%以上，那上述数字就会变成略显尴尬的：
0。
要知道，无论是立讯精密、歌尔股份，苹果的订单占比一度都超过了这些果链企业营收的70%以上；即便像富士康母公司鸿海精密这样的行业巨头，苹果的订单收入也一度接近集团营收的五成。
显然，特斯拉概念股还没有进化成“特链”的级别。
例如，对于宁德来说，特斯拉可能是一个占比10%的重要潜力客户，它将某种程度上影响其与LG，谁最终成为全球第一大电池制造商的归属。但如果真的以客户类型划分，无论是国内的造车新势力，还是传统车企转型，目前都是比特斯拉更大的蛋糕类型——宁德的基本盘依然是国内的新能源企业。
而对于福耀这种级别的公司来说，特斯拉的天窗订单似乎并不比上汽五菱的订单更高贵，更无法与丰田大众的千万级产销巨头相比了。
相比之下，中国国内一些主要依靠LG动力电池的二级供应商，反而更符合“特链”的标准。特斯拉上海工厂吃掉了相当大比例LG新能源中国工厂的订单，让后者一度在全球装机量短时逆袭了宁德时代。但随着时间的推移，你或许会越来越难准确地说，这些公司到底更多是“LG链”，还是“特链”。
毕竟如果强行把上述产业链全部归为“特链”，多少有点乱了辈分。与其说它们是“特斯拉概念股”，不如说是它们是“马氏精选电车产业链200指数”。
马斯克的“福特崇拜”
特链和果链是不同的两个生态，就像马斯克和乔布斯是两个截然不同的人一样。尽管马斯克很多时候表现得很享受外界将自己与乔布斯做对比，但他们确实有着不同的性格，处在不同的行业，秉持不同的生意理念。
而如果真的要将一个“先贤”来和马斯克作比较，那一定是亨利·福特。
这种相似度现在看来像是刻在基因里的。他们都年轻有为又“性格内向”，喜欢购买传媒资产，对新货币与新能源有着极高的兴趣，在长期浸淫的工厂里表现得民主又独裁。
他们都在民主党和共和党之间摇摆不定。或者更激进一点地说，他们都更像是披着民主党人外衣的共和党人。而生意本身从来无法满足他们的胃口，美国总统才是他们的梦想（对了，马斯克只是想在火星建立新文明）。
不过相比于这些“业余兴趣爱好”，他们更重要的共性在于对供应链有着相似的理解和追求——相信垂直整合的力量，即从头建设一切的雄心壮志。
马斯克曾经公开表达对于福特代表作“胭脂河工厂”的欣赏。在马斯克看来，老福特最重要的产品从来都不是model T，而是以“胭脂河工厂”为代表的生产体系。
上世纪20年代的胭脂河，是一个就地采矿、伐木、炼钢、铸件、组装，然后就地出车的魔法之地，现在你大概只有在《帝国时代》这类的RTS游戏里，才能再看到这样的场景了。
这片庞大的工厂区仅运输铁路就高达100英里（160公里），用来连接厂区内的93座单体建筑。而大概也只有在汽车流水线工业初生的年代，才能够诞生的工业制造奇迹。
后来人们说，福特重新定义了工厂，也重新定义了资本主义。
胭脂河工厂曾是个工业奇迹
一百年后，来自南非的“年轻人”建设起了一个新的基于电动智能汽车的权力中心，并将之命名为：超级工厂（gigafactory）。
与老福特的model T一样，特斯拉的核心产品同样不是model 3，而是gigafactory背后的硬件制造体系。
而马斯克大概是这个星球最擅长以独特方式进行“垂直整合”的人了。
只是这种垂直整合的水平，不再仅仅是低水平的组装功能的地理位置集合，而是将产业链中的各个环节打通，并从中找到最经济实惠的技术迭代路线。
这样的案例其实有很多，甚至贯穿了整个马斯克的硬件商业模式的大叙事中：
比如，在特斯拉故事的开头：当时，全球所有的汽车巨头们，都想当然地将动力电池视技术，视作新能源汽车短期内难以逾越的瓶颈。这家初创电动汽车厂商，直接拿者松下的3C级锂电池进行串联，最终实现了roadster百公里加速3.7秒的加速体验，由此圈下了一大堆极客粉丝。
而在SpaceX的故事里：你会知道马斯克是多么热衷于，将各种各样的民用零配件安装到飞往太空的超级飞船上。SpaceX甚至拿着三颗普通的民用芯片去替代那些，原本用来对抗宇宙射线和耐高温的昂贵航空改装芯片。因为他从概率上认为，通过不断让几个芯片自动对齐，就可以极大程度消灭辐射干扰问题。
事实上，这种统一整合的方式，所展现出的共同特性是：
马斯克不喜欢那些由于高额技术溢价，而过多增加自己硬件成本的东西。
一个更典型的案例，即特斯拉是主要玩家中，几乎是最早取消掉激光毫米波等探测器，转而坚持彻彻底底视觉导航的公司。
在马斯克看来，道路是为了人眼设计的，那么视觉就应该是道路导航中最好的解决方案。但底层来看，视觉路线的本质是一个可以由特斯拉所掌握的算法系统，它可能有一天能够复用在各种各样的机器人场景中。而与此同时，这套路线的硬件采买成本，仅仅只是迟早会便宜得像硅片一样的国产摄像头。
和一百年前的亨利·福特一样，马斯克恨不得将一切的产品都重新回归到Bom成本去看待。只是在这个已然是超级分工的时代，马斯克愿意为这些产品的外包，“额外”多承担几个点的毛利率。
用硅谷的技术团队，嫁接全球的超级工厂，马斯克实际上正在打造一个跨越空间的超级胭脂河工厂。而连接这些工厂不再只是笨重的铁路，还有遍布全球的数据带宽。
而在更多时候，特斯拉显然又比老福特走得更前。
比如，特斯拉是全球最早成功地杀死了经销商的乘用车品牌。尽管后者其实是一百多年来，被证实是绝大多数汽车品牌成本最低的流通方式，但显然马斯克认为新能源汽车可以做得更好；
而特斯拉也不甘于像企业车企仅仅做保险代理，转而要上线完全自营的、基于崭新定价逻辑的保险业务。
在马斯克近期的采访中，其也明确表示特斯拉其实是六家公司的集合体：
销售与服务；超充业务；垂直整合（制造业务）；软件与AI算法；芯片与算力（dojo平台）；特斯拉保险。
显然，老福特通过流水线模式，开创了工业时代的整合帝国；而现在，新能源和智能交通大革命下的马斯克，正在新时代重走老福特的长征路——这或许是每一个崭新工业巨头的某种宿命。
帝国还是王国？
如果我们充分理解了马斯克在成本和效率上的极致考量，那我们便可以顺理成章地理解，苹果和特斯拉在对待外部硬件创新态度上，在根本上就是不同的。
许多人想起乔布斯时，脑海中往往是那个具有“现实扭曲力场”、“偏执狂”一般的产品经理。而这个让无数人痛苦又癫狂的人，恰好在生命中开创了一个人类前所未有的智能产品——只有一个按键的iPhone。
“偏执狂”与“前无古人”，这两个因素共同意味着在当时全球的3C制造业中，其实很难有人能够达到乔布斯对产品设计的需求。换言之，iPhone的诞生需要大量“未实现”的工艺来进行，这意味着下游产业链需要围绕着乔布斯的需求，做大量的定制化需求开发。
在后来媒体大量的周边采访中，无论是富士康创始人郭台铭、还是康宁CEO韦克斯（Wendel Weeks），那些借助苹果飞黄腾达的核心供应商们，都清晰地记得当自己面对“超纲试题”目瞪口呆时，乔布斯给他们说的那句类似的话：
我知道你们肯定可以做到，回去试一试，不试试怎么知道呢？
乔布斯诱人的订单量叠加其“现实扭曲力场”Buff，足以让这些身家千亿的产业大佬们，像打工仔一样乖乖回去带着团队加班做测试。而当即便这样都无法推动核心供应商做更多事情时，苹果有时甚至会为此设立数额有时高达10亿美金的产业基金，或者干脆直接出手给产业链公司买新一条专用于苹果的生产线设备。
这也从某种程度上能够部分解释，为什么乔布斯的继任者甚至不是产品经理，而是供应链负责人：
当一个公司的核心竞争力是产品经理时，那么产品是核心；但当一个公司的核心是偏执狂产品经理时，公司的核心竞争力会无限接近对产品落地的执行能力。尤其是过高要求的“定制”，本身就带有一种反市场惯性的倾向，那就必须有人为它付出更多的精力和额外的成本。
而能够贯彻出苹果“高糖”又“高压”供应链帝国的人，除了乔布斯以外，大概也只有库克了。
所以，你甚至可以下一个稍显粗暴的结论说：果链的本质，其实就是“苹果定制”的产物。而这也是为什么，即便在Android手机厂商已经非常成熟的今天，依然有相当一部分消费者会被苹果完成度极高的产品所惊艳。
特斯拉也喜欢定制，也自诩为供应链驱动的超级公司。
当然，这种定制的含义是截然不同的。
特斯拉的定制往往喜欢自己来做，其终极目的是通过自己的定制，来让上下游产业链对自己变得更廉价、更接近Bom成本。所以，即便真的有一些“特斯拉定制”产业，其实也是围绕着特斯拉对“自己亲手定制”所延伸的需求来展开的。
如果只谈汽车制造，最广为人知的案例便是著名的“Giga Press”一体化压铸技术。
一体化压铸不是什么新技术，但此前很少用于汽车中。
主要原因是传统汽车厂，长期使用冲压+焊接的方式工作，故对于“一体化压铸”的良品率和强度都有所怀疑。此外，Giga Press消灭了一部分零件体系，那4S店会少一部分零件收入，汽车的维修难度也会增大。毕竟壳是一体的，那稍微“壮烈”一点的碰撞，就可能让损失金额接近报废。
但另一方面，这又是一个为马斯克而生的工艺。
它省料、省工序，所以车身会更轻——因此还可以变相降低一点电池成本。况且，马斯克也不喜欢事多还拿钱的4S店，所以直接拍板就用了。至于第三方保险费贵了，特斯拉还可以顺便用数据建立自己保险业务的护城河。
而回看前文中，A股唯二的两家“特链”企业拓普与旭升，其实都是一体化压铸技术的产业链企业。
这是一个常识性的道理，要想在一个领域开辟出属于自己的“链”企业，你至少需要在新领域有引领性的地位。
特斯拉当然是有的，但大部分时候，更多的创新领域都来自特斯拉加州和德州的团队。无论是电池设计还是自动驾驶及算力建设，特斯拉一定是亲力亲为，而绝不是外包给松下、宁德或者英伟达的人来做。
尤其像英伟达这样的公司，他们未来更有可能是人工智能领域的竞争对手，而深入合作的伙伴。甚至有一天，随着特斯拉在电芯等领域自建生产线，像宁德时代这样的公司可能也会是其潜在的对手。
这或许与马斯克的愿景不无关系，他希望特斯拉可以成为一个年产千万的汽车集团，并而马斯克同时相信，更低的价格必然带来更广阔的产品场景。这种对自身规模的诉求，让他不断朝着极端业务成本的公司转变。
这种价格力度之大，以至于model3和modelY一度在市场成为“期货”一般的存在。即便自己旗舰店门口还站着抗议降价的老车主，特斯拉还能逆势接着降几千。
马斯克“厌恶”成本，因为低成本被视作特斯拉的的武器；而苹果“利用”成本，产业溢价是它的皇冠。
所以你其实很难想象，乔布斯有一天会像马斯克一样，为了某个生产环节而没日没夜地睡在工厂里。他会选择自己欣赏的供应商，然后拿钱和梦想鞭策他们。如果失败了，他会再换一个更胜任的人选或者供应商，来做它想要的事情。
同样，你也很难想象马斯克会真的像乔布斯一样，因为产品偏执狂一般的追求，而让自己的iPad系列产品中，迟迟没有自带计算器应用出现。相反，马斯克一定会去选择能够迭代的那个方案先用起来。
所以从某种程度上来说，苹果像是一个帝国。
他分包一切，然后几乎用驾驭诸侯国的方式去驾驭各种供应商——该打压的时候打压，该赋能的时候赋能，收税是无情的、撒钱也毫不手软。
最终，苹果得以从全球庞大的供应链疆域里，榨取出那些最值钱的生产力潜力。
而特斯拉更像是一个王国。
他从头到尾建立了一套直接管理的，从工厂到消费者的供应链体系。他亲自掌握易守难攻且高产的土地，然后从世界公开市场中选择最质优价廉的产品作为生产力的补充。
而对大部分公开市场中的玩家来说，它除了能够带来更多的订单外，与其他的参与者，并没有太多本质上的区别。
这其中是没有优劣之分，王国与帝国是一种治理态度。而如果统治能力足够强，王国也不一定就比帝国小。
就像“特链”也未必就比“果链”差。从某种角度上来说，特斯拉或许更良性。
毕竟，已经百万亿GDP规模的中国产业，早已经不是曾经的灰姑娘。因此也不再需要那种，依靠某个慈父般的超级公司，形成一片热带雨林的故事了。
这或许才是特斯拉概念后的“硅谷-中国”软硬件新语境下，更具有代表性的那一面。
(Guo Haiwei / tr. by Phil Newell)
The successor of “fruit chain”?
在建厂之初，无论是产业链、政策观察者，还是马斯克及各级投资者们，都对特斯拉的产业效率抱有极高的期待。
For Tesla, the postal area is a “capacity paradise”, which can provide the most comprehensive spare parts and solutions for the start-up car company that was once stuck in the supply chain in the shortest time.
As for the industrial chain, Tesla’s huge and fast-growing orders, Musk Silicon Valley geeks, and the emerging intelligent industry attribute of streetcars make almost everyone immediately think of the man named Steve Jobs. I once brought great wealth to our coastal entrepreneurs more than a decade ago.
It was an opportunity of the times to send a group of grassroots entrepreneurs directly to the Forbes list, and those who were either accomplished or abandoned because it was given a common name:
“fruit chain”.
In the past decade, the fruit chain, like a mysterious label, has become a symbol of 3C manufacturing wealth.
They once owned hundreds of billions of market capitalization enterprises in the A-share market, such as Lixun Precision, Lance Technology, Gore shares and so on. What they have in common is that they are known as Apple and rely on Apple-more than 70% of their revenue once came from orders from Apple Park in California.
According to rough statistics, Apple family buckets provide $100 billion in hardware order value for downstream industrial chains at all levels around the world every year, of which a considerable part of the parts business goes to the supply chain system in East Asia. At its peak, only A-share “fruit chain three stupid”, the total market capitalization scale is nearly trillion. Even today, when 3C manufacturing fades, the word “Apple concept” still surrounds 2 trillion listed companies.
Now Tesla is catching up with Apple in terms of output value.
Wall Street expects Tesla to provide $70 billion in manufacturing value worldwide this year, and if all goes well, it will double further in the next two or three years-eventually surpassing Apple to become the largest provider of hardware value in Silicon Valley.
Behind the doubling of sales, Musk may also mean that Musk will replace Apple as the new spokesman for Silicon Valley’s link to Chinese manufacturing.
In fact, Tesla’s enthusiasm for Chinese manufacturing may also be rare in Silicon Valley.
If you compare the development time of iPhone production and marketing, Tesla, who has been ploughing electric vehicles for more than a decade, is in his “iPhone4 moment.” More people-friendly models are allowing Tesla to climb the slope at an unprecedented rate.
If only in terms of output value, the annual size of the Shanghai port factory of 150 billion yuan is also equivalent to the hardware value of Apple in 2012. Both the current capacity of 450000 vehicles and the doubling of capacity planned for Phase II are enough to make the plant the largest single car plant in the country and even in the future.
At present, the only comparable foreign / private factory is probably Zhengzhou Foxconn. As the most important production base of iPhone in the world, 300000 employees of Zhengzhou Foxconn exported more than 200 billion yuan of 3C products in 2020. However, unlike the port factory, Zhengzhou Foxconn is actually a collection of factories distributed in three districts, and mobile phone manufacturing is just one of its businesses.
The large and fast-growing output scale is not enough to show Musk’s “enthusiasm” for China, and Tesla further holds a positive attitude towards “localization”.
In 2021, its officials made it clear that the future factory in Shanghai will achieve a 100% localization rate.
Although the definition of 100% localization rate actually refers to the localization rate in the sense of location, it does not refer to local companies. But this is still a positive and rare statement for Silicon Valley. For the fruit chain companies that repeatedly struggled in love and hate Apple many years ago, this is an even more elusive gesture.
从各个角度来看，特斯拉无论从实力、意愿，还是长相上来看，似乎都正在成为“果链”的最佳继承人。
图源：特斯拉官网
Invisible “special chain”
So, Tesla may, as many expected, emulate the “fruit chain” to open the next “special chain miracle”?
The answer may be complicated.
From a numerical point of view, the industrial chain company behind Tesla is indeed very large. If we compare the “Apple concept” and “Tesla concept” in the A-share market, we will find that the enterprise value in Tesla’s industrial chain has far exceeded that of Apple’s industrial chain.
“特斯拉概念股”拥有193家企业，合计4万亿人民币市值；“苹果概念股”则拥有105家企业，合计2万亿人民币市值。
However, if we carefully look at the structure of the company, we will find that although the industrial chain and the scale of the company behind Tesla are huge, most of them are Tesla’s “ordinary friends” and have a strong “head effect” in the industry. among them, there are mature leading enterprises with ultra-high market capitalization, such as Ningde era, Longji shares, Fuyao Glass and so on.
In other words, Tesla does not occupy a dominant position.
If you look at the “special chain” according to the requirements of the “fruit chain”, it means that there are not many companies that can really be called the “special chain”. Taking the data for fiscal year 2021 as an example, for companies with more than 30% of Tesla’s revenue, there are actually only two A-shares:
Top Group, Xusheng shares.
If the share standard is raised to more than 50%, the above figures will become slightly embarrassing:
0 .
You know, whether it is Lixun Precision, Gore shares, Apple’s orders once accounted for more than 70% of the revenue of these fruit chain companies; even for industry giants such as Foxconn parent company Hon Hai Precision, Apple’s order revenue was once close to 50% of the group’s revenue.
Obviously, Tesla concept stock has not evolved into a “special chain” level.
For Ningde, for example, Tesla may be an important 10 per cent potential customer, which will to some extent affect its ownership with LG, who will eventually become the world’s largest battery manufacturer. However, if it is really divided by the type of customers, whether it is the new power of domestic car-building or the transformation of traditional car companies, it is currently a bigger cake type than Tesla-the basic plate of Ningde is still a domestic new energy enterprise.
For a company like Fuyao, Tesla’s skylight order does not seem to be more noble than that of SAIC Wuling, let alone the tens of millions of production and marketing giants of Toyota and Volkswagen.
In contrast, some of China’s domestic secondary suppliers of LG power batteries are more in line with the “special chain” standard. Tesla’s Shanghai plant ate a large proportion of orders from LG’s new energy plants in China, allowing the latter to counterattack the Ningde era for a short time in global installed capacity. But over time, it may become more and more difficult for you to say exactly whether these companies are more “LG chains” or “special chains”.
After all, if we forcibly classify all the above industrial chains as “special chains”, it will be a bit of a mess of seniority. They are not so much “Tesla concept stocks” as “Ma’s selected tram industry chain index”.
Musk’s “Ford worship”
Special chain and fruit chain are two different ecology, just like Musk and Jobs are two very different people. Although Musk often seems to enjoy being compared with Jobs, they do have different personalities, different industries and different business ideas.
And if you really want to compare a “sage” with Musk, it must be Henry Ford.
This similarity now seems to be engraved in genes. They are young, promising and introverted, like to buy media assets, have a high interest in new currencies and new energy, and behave democratic and autocratic in factories that have been immersed for a long time.
They all vacillate between Democrats and Republicans. Or, more radically, they are all more like Republicans in the cloak of Democrats. The business itself can never satisfy their appetite, and the president of the United States is their dream (by the way, Musk just wants to build a new civilization on Mars).
But what they have in common more than these “hobbies” is that they have a similar understanding and pursuit of the supply chain-believing in the power of vertical integration, the ambition to build everything from scratch.
Musk has publicly expressed his appreciation for Ford’s masterpiece Rouge River Factory. In Musk’s view, the most important product of old Ford has never been the model T, but the production system represented by the Rouge River Factory.
The Rouge River in the 1920s was a magical place for local mining, logging, steelmaking, casting, assembly, and then driving on the spot, and now you can probably only see such scenes in RTS games such as the Age of Empire.
The vast factory complex carries 100 miles (160 kilometers) of railways alone, connecting 93 individual buildings in the plant. And probably only in the automobile assembly line industry at the beginning of the era, the birth of the industry can create miracles.
It was later said that Ford redefined factories and redefined capitalism.
The Rouge River factory was an industrial miracle.
A hundred years later, “young people” from South Africa built a new power center based on electric smart cars and named it gigafactory.
Like the old Ford model T, Tesla’s core product is not the model 3, but the hardware manufacturing system behind the gigafactory.
Musk is probably the best person on the planet who is good at “vertical integration” in a unique way.
But this level of vertical integration is no longer just a geographical location collection of low-level assembly functions, but to open up all links in the industrial chain and find the most economical iterative route of technology.
这样的案例其实有很多，甚至贯穿了整个马斯克的硬件商业模式的大叙事中：
For example, at the beginning of Tesla’s story: at that time, all the auto giants in the world took it for granted that power battery technology was regarded as an insurmountable bottleneck for new energy vehicles in the short term. The start-up electric car maker cascaded Panasonic’s 3C-class lithium battery in series, eventually achieving an acceleration experience of 3.7 seconds at 100 km, thus attracting a large number of geek fans.
And in the story of SpaceX: you will know how keen Musk is to install all kinds of civilian parts on super spaceships flying into space. SpaceX even replaced those expensive aviation retrofit chips that were originally used to fight cosmic rays and high temperatures with three ordinary civilian chips. Because in terms of probability, he believes that by constantly aligning several chips automatically, the problem of radiation interference can be greatly eliminated.
In fact, the common characteristics of this unified and integrated approach are:
Musk doesn’t like things that add too much to his hardware costs because of the high technology premium.
A more typical case is that Tesla, the main player, was almost the first company to cancel detectors such as laser millimeter waves and instead insist on thorough visual navigation.
In Musk’s view, roads are designed for the human eye, so vision should be the best solution in road navigation. But at the bottom, the essence of visual route is an algorithm system that can be mastered by Tesla, which may one day be reused in a variety of robot scenes. At the same time, the hardware purchase cost of this route is only domestic cameras that will sooner or later be as cheap as silicon chips.
Like Henry Ford a hundred years ago, Musk wanted to return all his products to Bom costs. Only in this era of super division of labor, Musk is willing to outsource these products, “extra” to bear a few more points of gross profit margin.
Using Silicon Valley’s technical team and grafting the world’s super factories, Musk is actually building a super Rouge River factory across space. Connecting these factories is no longer just clunky railways, but also data bandwidth all over the world.
And more often, Tesla is obviously more advanced than the old Ford.
For example, Tesla is the first passenger car brand in the world to successfully kill dealers. Although the latter has been proved to be the cheapest way of circulation for most car brands for more than a hundred years, Musk obviously thinks that new energy vehicles can do better.
而特斯拉也不甘于像企业车企仅仅做保险代理，转而要上线完全自营的、基于崭新定价逻辑的保险业务。
In a recent interview, Musk also made it clear that Tesla is actually a collection of six companies:
销售与服务；超充业务；垂直整合（制造业务）；软件与AI算法；芯片与算力（dojo平台）；特斯拉保险。
Obviously, the old Ford created the integrated empire of the industrial age through the assembly line model, and now Musk, under the revolution of new energy and intelligent transportation, is going back to the long March of the old Ford in a new era-perhaps some kind of fate of every new industrial giant.
Empire or kingdom?
If we fully understand Musk’s extreme considerations in terms of cost and efficiency, it makes sense that Apple and Tesla have fundamentally different attitudes towards external hardware innovation.
When many people think of Jobs, they often think of the product manager with “reality distortion force field” and “paranoia”. And this person, who makes countless people miserable and crazy, happens to create an unprecedented intelligent product in human life-iPhone with only one button.
“paranoia” and “unprecedented”, these two factors meant that in the global 3C manufacturing industry at that time, it was very difficult for anyone to meet Jobs’ demand for product design. In other words, the birth of iPhone requires a large number of “unrealized” processes, which means that the downstream industry chain needs to do a lot of customized demand development around the needs of Jobs.
In a large number of subsequent interviews around the media, whether it was Foxconn founder Terry Gou or Corning CEO Wendel Weeks, the core suppliers who thrived with Apple, they clearly remembered what Jobs said to them when they were dumbfounded in the face of the “super test questions.”
I know you can do it. Go back and have a try. How can you know if you don’t try?
Jobs’ attractive orders superimposed his “reality distortion force field” Buff, enough for these billionaire industry bosses to go back like wage earners and take the team to work overtime for the test. And even when this doesn’t motivate core suppliers to do more, Apple sometimes even sets up an industrial fund for it, sometimes as high as $1 billion, or simply buy a new production line equipment for Apple for the industrial chain company.
This partly explains why Jobs’ successor is not even a product manager, but the head of the supply chain:
When the core competence of a company is the product manager, then the product is the core; but when the core of a company is the paranoid product manager, the core competence of the company will be infinitely close to the execution ability of the product landing. In particular, the overly demanding “customization” itself has a tendency against the inertia of the market, so someone must pay more energy and extra cost for it.
In addition to Jobs, Cook is probably the only one who can implement Apple’s “high-sugar” and “high-pressure” supply chain empire.
So you can even come to a slightly ruder conclusion: the nature of the fruit chain is actually the product of “Apple customization”. And that’s why, even though Android phone manufacturers are very mature today, a considerable number of consumers will be amazed by Apple’s highly completed products.
Tesla also likes customization and claims to be a supply chain-driven super company.
Of course, the meaning of this customization is very different.
Tesla’s customization often likes to do it himself, and its ultimate goal is to make the upstream and downstream industrial chains cheaper and closer to Bom costs through their own customization. Therefore, even if there are really some “Tesla customization” industry, in fact, it is also around Tesla’s extended demand for “own customization”.
If we only talk about automobile manufacturing, the most well-known case is the famous “Giga Press” integrated die-casting technology.
Integrated die casting is not a new technology, but it is rarely used in automobiles before.
The main reason is that traditional automobile factories work in the way of stamping and welding for a long time, so there are doubts about the quality rate and strength of “integrated die casting”. In addition, if Giga Press eliminates part of the parts system, the 4S store will have less parts revenue and car maintenance will be more difficult. After all, the shell is one, and a little “heroic” collision may make the loss close to scrap.
但另一方面，这又是一个为马斯克而生的工艺。
It saves materials and processes, so the body is lighter-so you can reduce battery costs a little bit in disguise. Moreover, Musk doesn’t like the 4S store where he gets paid for more work, so he just makes a decision and uses it. As for the high premium of third-party insurance, Tesla can also use data to build a moat of his own insurance business.
Looking back at the previous article, the only two A-share “special chain” enterprises, Topp and Xusheng, are in fact industrial chain enterprises of integrated die-casting technology.
这是一个常识性的道理，要想在一个领域开辟出属于自己的“链”企业，你至少需要在新领域有引领性的地位。
Tesla does, of course, but most of the time, more areas of innovation come from teams in Tesla, California and Texas. Whether it’s battery design or autopilot and math construction, Tesla must have done it himself, not outsourced to Panasonic, Ningde or Nvidia.
Companies like Nvidia, in particular, are more likely to be competitors and partners in the field of artificial intelligence in the future. Even one day, as Tesla builds its own production lines in areas such as batteries, companies like Ningde Times may also be potential rivals.
This may have something to do with Musk’s vision that Tesla can become an automobile group with an annual output of 10 million, and Musk also believes that lower prices will inevitably lead to a broader product scene. This demand for his own size has led him to transform into a company with extreme business costs.
The price is so strong that model3 and modelY once became “futures” in the market. Even if there are old car owners standing in front of his flagship store protesting against the price reduction, Tesla can still go against the trend and drop by thousands.
马斯克“厌恶”成本，因为低成本被视作特斯拉的的武器；而苹果“利用”成本，产业溢价是它的皇冠。
So it’s hard for you to imagine that Jobs will one day, like Musk, sleep day and night in a factory for a certain production process. He will choose suppliers he admires and spur them with money and dreams. If he fails, he will find a more competent person or supplier to do what it wants.
Similarly, it’s hard to imagine that Musk would be like Jobs, who didn’t have his own calculator app for a long time in his iPad series because of his paranoid pursuit. On the contrary, Musk will definitely choose the one that can be iterated to use first.
So in a way, Apple is like an empire.
He subcontracted everything, and then managed suppliers almost in the same way as vassal states-suppressing when it was time to crack down, empowering when it was time to empower, collecting taxes ruthlessly and spending money without mercy.
In the end, Apple was able to extract the most valuable productivity potential from the world’s vast supply chain.
Tesla is more like a kingdom.
From beginning to end, he established a directly managed supply chain system from factory to consumer. He personally mastered the land that is easy to defend, difficult to attack and high-yielding, and then chose the best quality and cheap products from the world open market as a supplement to productivity.
而对大部分公开市场中的玩家来说，它除了能够带来更多的订单外，与其他的参与者，并没有太多本质上的区别。
这其中是没有优劣之分，王国与帝国是一种治理态度。而如果统治能力足够强，王国也不一定就比帝国小。
Just like the “special chain” is not necessarily worse than the “fruit chain”. In a way, Tesla may be more benign.
After all, China’s industry, which has a billion-dollar GDP, is no longer the Cinderella it used to be. So there is no need for the story of relying on some fatherly supercompany to form a tropical rainforest.
This may be the more representative side of “Silicon Valley-China” in the new context of software and hardware after Tesla’s concept.
