One Ford for the Whole World
一款福特车 销遍全世界
America is the Galapagos Islands of automobiles. We have cars roaming our highways like no other vehicles on earth. Car makers want to change this, but it won't be easy.
美国就像汽车工业的一个孤岛。我们生产的汽车在美国高速公路上徜徉，好像这里就是它们的全部世界了。汽车制造商希望改变这一状况，但这并不容易。
Consider the Ford Focus. Ford Motor Co. sells a compact car called the Focus in Europe, and a very similar-sized car in the U.S. under the same name. If you showed these cars to most consumers -- car geeks don't count -- they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them. But they aren't the same car. In fact, even though they look alike, there's very little in common between the current European Focus and the U.S. Focus, says Derrick Kuzak, head of Ford's world-wide product development. Under the skin, they might as well have been made by two different companies.
以福特福克斯(Ford Focus)为例。福特汽车公司(Ford Motor Co.)在欧洲销售的一款小型汽车名为福克斯，而在美国销售的一款大小类似的车型也叫同样的名字。如果把这两款汽车拿给大多数消费者看（汽车发烧友除外），没人可以看出区别，但事实上这两款车并不相同。福特汽车负责全球产品开发的主管德里克·库扎克(Derrick Kuzak)说，尽管看上去一样，但欧洲版福克斯和美国版福克斯的相同点却很少。在相同的外表下，这两款车的区别就像分别出产自两家不同的公司。
Next year, Ford will launch a new Focus in the U.S. that will have 80% of its parts in common with the European version. This car and a smaller model called the Fiesta, also due out next year, are among the first fruits of a costly and urgent effort overseen by Mr. Kuzak to develop cars that can be engineered once and sold around the world in more or less the same form -- a strategy Japanese and European auto makers have pursued successfully for years.
明年，福特汽车将在美国市场发布新款福克斯，新版美国福克斯将会有80%的零部件与欧洲版通用。另一款比福克斯还小的车型也将在明年发布，名字为嘉年华(Fiesta)。福克斯和嘉年华是库扎克负责项目的第一批成果。福特汽车这个投入大量资金且急于见效的项目希望开发出可以在全世界范围销售的基本车型。这种策略已经被日本和欧洲的汽车制造商成功实施了多年。
So why is the forthcoming U.S. Focus going to be only 80% identical to the European Focus? Why not 100%? A big part of the answer is government rules that haven't evolved to reflect the realities of a global car market.
但是为什么即将发布的新版美国福克斯只能和欧洲版共享80%的零部件？为什么不是100%？原因是政府的规定还不能适应全球统一市场的现实。
Converging Models
From a consumer point of view, the U.S. and European car markets are converging, driven in part by tougher U.S. fuel-efficiency standards.
从一个消费者的角度看，美国和欧洲的汽车市场正在趋于一致，这部分是因为美国实施了更严格的燃油效率标准。
President George W. Bush gave a big boost to this convergence in 2007 when he signed a law requiring car makers to boost the average fuel economy of their U.S. car fleets to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 from the 27.5 mpg standard in effect for more than 30 years. President Barack Obama and his administration have signaled they may push for an even higher effective fuel-economy target as a result of an effort to craft a national standard for vehicle carbon-dioxide emissions.
2007年美国总统布什签署了一项法案，要求汽车制造商在2020年之前将在美销售汽车的平均油耗降低到35英里/加仑，取代已经实行了30多年的27.5英里/加仑这一标准，这对美欧汽车市场趋同起了很大推动作用。现任总统奥巴马以及他的政府已经发出信号，为了制定机动车二氧化碳排放量的全国标准，在燃油效率方面有可能推行更高的目标。
For Detroit's struggling car makers, this isn't as terrible as it might appear. Reaching those fuel-efficiency levels will mean shifting Americans over time into cars that are smaller, more technically sophisticated and more likely to be propelled by four-cylinder engines than big V-8s.
对于底特律处于困境的汽车制造商来说，这些消息并不像看起来那么可怕。达到这些燃油效率标准将意味着让美国人坐回体积更小、技术更精密汽车，并且汽车很可能由一台4缸引擎驱动，而不是大型的V8引擎。
It just so happens these are the very cars General Motors Corp. and Ford sell in Europe and in many Asian countries today. Designing 'world cars' that can achieve global economies of scale is the auto industry's Holy Grail. Bringing America into the mainstream of the world auto market would put that prize within reach for the two largest U.S. auto makers.
其实这类汽车正是通用汽车和福特汽车在欧洲和许多亚洲国家销售的车型。设计一款能在全球范围内实现规模效益的“世界通用汽车”是汽车工业长久以来的目标。对美国最大的两家汽车制造商来说，将美国引入世界汽车市场的主流可以使自己离这个目标更近些。
Chrysler LLC could benefit, too, because a Europeanized American car market would buoy its strategy of selling cars co-designed with Italian auto maker Fiat SpA, should that alliance come to pass.
克莱斯勒(Chrysler LLC)也同样可以从中受益。如果克莱斯勒与菲亚特(Fiat SpA)的结盟能通过审批，那么美国汽车市场的欧洲化将有利于克莱斯勒销售它与菲亚特联合设计的汽车。
Regulatory policy and practice, however, aren't global. U.S. government crash standards, for example, require car makers to take into consideration the potential harm to passengers who aren't wearing seat belts when designing the crash-safety features of their cars. European governments assume that everyone riding in a car is wearing a belt -- a standard that's easier and less costly for car makers to meet.
U.S. government and insurance-industry crash tests effectively require that American cars have stouter, heavier bumpers, the better to withstand impacts of five miles per hour. European crash tests don't put the same premium on bumper strength. The result is that cars need different bumper designs for Europe and the U.S.
但是，各国的政策法规和实际操作并不符合全球化的要求。例如，美国政府的碰撞标准要求汽车制造商考虑车上乘客在未系安全带的情况下可能遭受的伤害，而欧洲的碰撞标准则假定车上的所有人都系了安全带。因此达到欧洲的碰撞标准更容易，所花成本也要小些。
European standards for rear-view mirrors are slightly different from U.S. requirements. A North American mirror has to be larger and flatter -- a fitting reflection, perhaps, on the dimensions of the average North American driver.
另外欧洲关于汽车后视镜的标准与美国也有些微的不同。相比之下美国汽车的后视镜更大更平一些，也许这反映了美国司机的平均身材。
Auto industry officials have lobbied for years to get the U.S. and European governments to harmonize their regulations. An effort begun under a 1998 trans-Atlantic agreement has produced results, such as common standards for electronic stability control, says James Vondale, director of Ford's automotive-safety office. When it comes to merging fundamental standards involving crash testing, lighting and brakes, 'there are still many challenges for manufacturers,' he says, citing in particular the U.S. requirement to design for unbelted passengers.
汽车工业的官员们已经游说多年，希望美国和欧洲各国的政府能够互相协调他们制定的政策。福特汽车的车辆安全办公室主管詹姆士·汪达尔(James Vondale)说，一个1998年签订的跨大西洋协议已经初见成效，这个协议规定了汽车电子稳定控制器等部件的共同标准。他还说，当这些共识逐渐涉及到碰撞测试、照明和刹车等基础标准的时候，“还将会有许多生产制造方面的挑战”，尤其是美国的设计必须考虑乘客不系安全带的情况。
'Picking Them Off'
A spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the agency is 'working very hard to harmonize as much as possible. We recognize it's become a global market.... We're picking them off one by one.'
美国国家公路交通安全管理局(National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)说，有关人员正在“非常努力地协调尽可能多的不同规定。我们认识到汽车行业已经形成了全球市场……我们正在一个问题接着一个问题地解决。”
The cost of trans-Atlantic regulatory disharmonies is a burden for all auto makers that have significant sales on both sides of the ocean. But it's particularly acute for Detroit's auto makers, which are playing catch-up in the race to develop global cars. The cost of adapting European Ford designs to American rules runs to 'hundreds of dollars a car' in extra costs, Mr. Kuzak says.
美欧两地标准的差异对那些在这两个市场都占有大量份额的汽车公司来说是一个沉重负担。但这种情况对底特律的汽车公司来说尤为严重，因为在研发全球通用汽车平台的竞赛中，他们已经落后。库扎克说，让欧洲版福特汽车符合美国标准的额外花费将达到“每辆车数百美元”。
That doesn't sound like much. But this is auto industry math: Multiplied by Ford's annual U.S. sales volume of about two million vehicles, 'hundreds of dollars' a car -- let's say $500 -- is nearly $1 billion a year. That's money Ford could use in its effort to stay off the public dole.
听起来好像并不多。但是按照汽车工业的公式：福特汽车每年在美国销售大约200万辆汽车，乘以每辆车多花费的数百美元，就算500美元，这也是接近每年10亿美元的开销。而福特汽车是可以省下这些钱救自己命的。
Joseph B. White
没有评论:
发表评论