Carmaking: Track Mentality

汽车制造：赛道心态

 

PSA Group’s boss has revived its fortunes. He isn’t done

PSA的老板已令集团重振雄风，但使命尚未完成

 

Carlos Tavares likes to move quickly. The boss of PSA, maker of Peugeots and Citroëns, has a passion for motor racing and speed pervades his day-to-day activities, too. The intense Portuguese arrives abruptly for meetings and departs so swiftly that it takes a few seconds to realise that he has gone. His reputation as the most talented boss now running a car company is also built on speed – his rapid and remarkable turnaround of two struggling firms, first PSA itself and then Opel, acquired from General Motors (GM) in 2017. Steering his mass-market firm towards the future of carmaking will not be easy.

 

标致和雪铁龙汽车的制造商PSA的老板唐唯实喜欢快速行动。他热爱赛车，日常工作也是雷厉风行。在公司会议上，这位性情热烈的葡萄牙人会突然来到，又迅疾离去，大家要过几秒钟才能反应过来他已离场。他之所以被誉为最具才华的汽车公司老板，也是因为速度——他迅速扭转了两家公司的颓势，先是PSA自己，然后是PSA在2017年从通用汽车收购的欧宝，成绩惊人。不过，带领这家大众市场汽车公司迈向汽车制造业的未来并非易事。

 

The permanent frown clouding Mr Tavares’s brow is a testament to the tough jobs he has pulled off. First, after taking the wheel of PSA in 2014 after years of heavy losses, he rescued it from bankruptcy. To near-universal surprise, he restored the firm to the black in a year. Revenues and profits have since grown handsomely; profit margins now rival those of German premium carmakers.

 

唐唯实终日眉头深锁，足以证明他成就的是何等艰巨的任务。首先，2014年，他在PSA严重亏损多年后掌舵，将公司从破产边缘拉回。几乎出乎所有人的意料，他在一年内便使公司扭亏为盈。之后收入和利润均大幅增长，到现在利润率已经可以媲美德国的高端汽车制造商。

 

As Maxime Picat, PSA’s director of operation in Europe, drily observes, seeking profits first and volumes afterwards has “not always been the case” in an industry that has prioritised sales and market share. PSA sought to sell fewer cars at a bigger mark-up. It axed niche models that made little money and slashed costs by limiting the bewildering array of combinations of engines, body styles and the like.

 

PSA的欧洲运营总监毕高诚淡淡地说，在这个向来强调销售和市场份额的行业，先求利润再谈销量“不是常见做法”。而PSA正是以较高的成本加成销售少一些的汽车。它砍掉了不怎么赚钱的小众车型，同时减少令人眼花缭乱的发动机、车身款式等配置选择以降低成本。

 

When PSA was criticised for lacking the heft to make big investments in electric vehicles and self-driving cars, Mr Tavares paid GM €1.3bn ($1.4bn) for its struggling European arm. This added around 1m vehicles a year to the 2.8m the rest of the group built in 2018, making it Europe’s second-biggest carmaker behind Volkswagen. He applied his tactics again, this time to a company which had suffered two decades of losses totalling around $20bn under American ownership. In 2018 Opel reported an operating profit of over €860m.

 

在PSA被批体量不足，无法对电动汽车和无人驾驶大笔投入时，唐唯实花费13亿欧元（14亿美元）收购了通用汽车陷入困境的欧洲业务。PSA在2018年的汽车年产量原本为280万辆，收购之后增加约100万辆，使之成为仅次于大众的欧洲第二大汽车制造商。唐唯实再次施展魔法，这次是对一家在美国人掌控下在20年间累计亏损约200亿美元的公司。而到了2018年，欧宝的营业利润超过8.6亿欧元。

 

The resurrection of two struggling car giants has propelled PSA’s share price by 14% over the past year. Steering the combined firm through the next series of bends will take a different set of skills, however. Car sales in Europe, where PSA generates 80% of revenues, are less brisk than in the past. Markets such as India and Russia, which Mr Tavares is eyeing, are trickier to negotiate. PSA has struggled in China, where carmakers have done well in recent years. Making humdrum Opels (sold as Vauxhalls in Britain) desirable will require heavy spending. Placid unions, which recognised PSA’s difficulties, may become less so as its health improves.

 

两家陷入困境的汽车巨头成功逆袭，推动PSA的股价在过去一年里上涨了14%。然而，要驾驭合并后的公司顺利通过下一串弯道需要的是另一套技能。在欧洲（为PSA创造了80%的收入），汽车销售已不如过去强劲。唐唯实目前紧盯印度和俄罗斯等市场，但在这些地方做生意的难度更大。在中国，近年来其他汽车制造商的业绩不俗，但PSA的中国业务却处境不佳。要让乏善可陈的欧宝（在英国名为沃克斯豪尔）受到买家青睐，不投入重金是不行的。随着PSA日渐复苏，以前体谅公司困境而保持温和的工会也可能有所动作。

 

A plan to return to America has also met with scepticism. PSA’s brands are largely forgotten there – the last one, Peugeot, departed 28 years ago. Rather than spending heavily on marketing, building a factory and losing money “like hell”, Mr Picat says, PSA will start with car-sharing services to reintroduce the marques gradually as part of a ten-year project that will “make money at every step”. This seems to be one place where Mr Tavares is content to go slowly.

 

集团重返美国市场的计划也受到了质疑。在美国，PSA的品牌基本上已被遗忘，它最后一个淡出美国市场的品牌是标致，那已经是28年前的事了。毕高诚表示，PSA不会砸大钱来营销和建厂，然后亏得“血本无归”，而是要实施一个“每一步都盈利”的十年期项目，先从汽车共享服务入手，逐步把品牌再次引入美国市场。在这方面，唐唯实似乎是乐意慢慢来的。

 

Further down the road, he worries about the added costs of electrification to meet EU emissions targets. The American car-sharing venture will offer some experience in mobility services, but PSA lags behind many rivals in autonomous vehicles. All this will require heavy spending.

 

再向前推进，唐唯实还担心为满足欧盟排放标准而新增的电气化成本。在美国的汽车共享业务会为集团带来一些出行服务上的经验，但PSA在无人驾驶汽车这一块落后于许多竞争对手。这一切都需要大量投入资金。

 

Greater scale would help. Mr Tavares is on the lookout for deals. A tie-up with GM or Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (whose chairman, John Elkann, sits on the board of The Economist’s parent company) has been rumoured. So has a takeover of struggling Jaguar Land Rover from its Indian owners. Some industry-watchers think consolidation is imminent – and virtually all believe it is necessary to share the costs of developing electric vehicles, self-driving cars and mobility services. Since the death last year of Sergio Marchionne, Fiat Chrysler’s legendary boss, and the legal travails in Japan of Carlos Ghosn, ejected from his leadership roles in the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, many observers see Mr Tavares as the only car boss with the skill to cut big and difficult deals.

 

扩大企业规模会有所帮助。唐唯实正在寻找并购机会。有传言称PSA打算与通用汽车或菲亚特-克莱斯勒（其董事长约翰·埃尔坎为《经济学人》母公司董事）合并。还有传言称PSA将从印度人手中收购苦苦挣扎的捷豹路虎。部分行业观察人士认为整合迫在眉睫。而几乎所有人都认同必须分担开发电动汽车、无人驾驶和出行服务的成本。去年，菲亚特-克莱斯勒极富传奇色彩的总裁塞尔吉奥·马尔乔内去世，卡洛斯·戈恩又在日本因身陷官司而被迫从雷诺-日产-三菱联盟下台，自此许多观察人士认为，车厂老板中就剩唐唯实有能力斩获高难度的大型并购交易了。

英文、中文版本下载：http://www.yingyushijie.com/shop/source/detail/id/1327.html