第三部分：创建公司
English: Q: What fuels your creativity?
中文： 问：什么激发你的创造力？
English: Pressure. Necessity.
中文： 压力。必要性。
WE MUST MAKE STUFF (continued)
我们必须制造东西（续）
The Real Work
真正的工作
English: Some people have an absurd view of the economy as a magic thing that just produces stuff.
中文： 有些人对经济有一种荒谬的看法，认为它是一个能自动生产东西的魔法。
English: They think goods and services magically come from somewhere, and if somebody has more stuff than somebody else, it's because they took more from this magic source of stuff.
中文： 他们认为商品和服务神奇地从某个地方来，如果有人比别人有更多东西，那是因为他们从这个魔法来源拿了更多。
English: Now, let me break it to the fools out there. If we don't make stuff, there's no stuff. If we don't grow the food, process the food, and transport the food…there's no food. Medical treatments, getting your teeth fixed, everything. There's no stuff if we don't make stuff.
中文： 现在，让我告诉那些愚蠢的人。如果我们不制造东西，就没有东西。如果我们不种植食物、加工食物、运输食物……就没有食物。医疗、补牙、一切。如果我们不制造东西，就没有东西。
English: Some people have become detached from reality. This notion that the government can just send checks out to everybody and everything will be fine is not true—obviously. You can't just legislate money to solve things. If you don't make stuff, there is no stuff. The whole machine could grind to a halt.
中文： 有些人已经脱离了现实。这种认为政府可以给每个人寄支票一切就会好起来的想法是不对的——显然。你不能仅仅通过立法印钱来解决问题。如果你不制造东西，就没有东西。整个机器可能会停止运转。
English: Technological progress is not inevitable. It's not some kind of abstract concept. Humans make technology. If we don't do it, it will not happen.
中文： 技术进步不是必然的。它不是某种抽象概念。人类创造技术。如果我们不做，它就不会发生。
English: Somebody has to do the real work.
中文： 必须有人做真正的工作。
English: There's an overallocation of talent in finance and law, especially in the United States. Too many smart people go into finance and law. This is both a compliment and a criticism. We should have fewer people doing law and finance and more people making stuff.
中文： 金融和法律领域人才过剩，特别是在美国。太多聪明人进入金融和法律。这既是赞美也是批评。我们应该有更少的人从事法律和金融，更多的人制造东西。
English: Manufacturing used to be highly valued in the United States. These days it hasn't been as much, which I think is wrong. Making cars is an honest day's living, that's for sure. Making anything or providing a valuable service like good entertainment, good information—these are valuable things to do.
中文： 制造业在美国曾经受到高度重视。这些天来没有那么多了，我认为这是错误的。制造汽车是诚实的谋生方式，这是肯定的。制造任何东西或提供有价值的服务，如好的娱乐、好的信息——这些都是有价值的事情。
English: I've got mad respect for the makers of things.
中文： 我对制造东西的人非常尊敬。
The Factory Is the Product
工厂就是产品
English: The biggest epiphany I had building Tesla is what really matters is the machine that builds the machines—the factory.
中文： 我在建造特斯拉过程中最大的顿悟是真正重要的是制造机器的机器——工厂。
English: To accelerate a sustainable future, Tesla had to scale up production volume as quickly as possible. That is why Tesla engineering transitioned to focus heavily on designing the machine that makes the machines—turning the factory itself into the product.
中文： 为了加速可持续的未来，特斯拉必须尽快扩大生产规模。这就是为什么特斯拉工程转变为专注于设计制造机器的机器——将工厂本身变成产品。
English: A first-principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a fivefold to tenfold improvement is achievable by version three on a roughly two-year iteration cycle.
中文： 对汽车生产的第一性原理物理分析表明，在大约两年的迭代周期内，到第三版可以实现五倍到十倍的改进。
English: Tesla believes strongly in making things. Apple and Google do not. It's a philosophical difference. We believe that manufacturing technology is itself subject to a tremendous amount of innovation. In fact, we believe there's more potential for innovation in manufacturing than in the design of a car—by a long shot. This is just a philosophical difference. Perhaps we are wrong. But we believe in manufacturing, and a company that values manufacturing as highly as we do will attract the best minds in manufacturing.
中文： 特斯拉坚信制造东西。苹果和谷歌不这样认为。这是一个哲学差异。我们相信制造技术本身会受到大量创新的影响。事实上，我们认为制造业的创新潜力比汽车设计大得多——远远超过。这只是哲学差异。也许我们错了。但我们相信制造业，一家像我们一样重视制造业的公司将吸引制造业最优秀的人才。
English: Our success or failure will not be because of competition. It will be our capability to make a high-quality product at a price people can afford.
中文： 我们的成功或失败不会是因为竞争。而是我们能否以人们负担得起的价格制造高质量产品。
English: You've got this giant factory, a cybernetic collective with ten thousand things going wrong and you've got to solve them all. Fast. If you don't solve problems fast enough, the factory doesn't go. A big factory burns a huge amount of money every minute you aren't making a product.
中文： 你有一个巨大的工厂，一个控制论集体，有一万件事出错，你必须全部解决。快速。如果你不能足够快地解决问题，工厂就无法运转。每一分钟你不生产产品，大工厂就会燃烧大量资金。
Attack the Constraint
攻击限制因素
English: Designing a rocket is trivial.
中文： 设计火箭是微不足道的。
English: There are tons of books you can read, and if you can understand equations, you can design a rocket. Real easy. But making even one of these things and getting it to orbit is very hard.
中文： 有成吨的书你可以读，如果你能理解方程，你就能设计火箭。很容易。但制造其中一个并将其送入轨道非常困难。
English: It's the same thing for cars. It's easy to make a car prototype; it's hard to do car production.
中文： 汽车也是一样。制造汽车原型很容易；进行汽车生产很难。
English: This is underappreciated. People think there is a "eureka" moment where you come up with an idea and that's it. They believe design is the hard part and production is just making copies. That's completely false.
中文： 这被低估了。人们认为有一个"尤里卡"时刻，你想出一个想法就完了。他们认为设计是困难的部分，生产只是复制。这完全错误。
English: At Tesla, we learned a valuable lesson. The production line will move as fast as the slowest and least lucky part of the entire production line. Let's say there are ten thousand things that have to go right for production to work. If you have 9,999 things working and one that isn't, that sets the production rate.
中文： 在特斯拉，我们学到了宝贵的教训。生产线的速度将取决于整个生产线中最慢和最不走运的部分。假设有上万件事必须正确才能让生产运转。如果你有 9,999 件事正常工作，有一件不正常，那就决定了生产率。
English: Things move as fast as the least lucky or least competent supplier. Any natural disaster you care to name has happened to our suppliers. A supplier had a factory burn down. An earthquake. A tsunami. Massive hail. A tornado. A ship sank. A shoot-out at the Mexican border. I'm not kidding. That delayed trunk carpet.
中文： 事情的速度取决于最不走运或最无能的供应商。任何你能想到的自然灾害都发生在我们的供应商身上。一个供应商的工厂被烧毁。地震。海啸。大冰雹。龙卷风。一艘船沉没。墨西哥边境的枪战。我不是开玩笑。那延迟了后备箱地毯。
English: So when scaling SpaceX, we spent ten to one hundred times more effort on designing the manufacturing system than on designing the Raptor engine. We built the rockets first and the factory later, because building the production system is the harder thing.
中文： 所以在扩大 SpaceX 规模时，我们在设计制造系统上花费的精力是设计猛禽发动机的十到一百倍。我们先建造火箭，后建造工厂，因为建造生产系统是更困难的事情。
English: Design is overrated, and manufacturing is underrated. There is 1,000 percent, maybe 10,000 percent more work that goes into the production system than the product itself. Especially for a product with new technology. The difficulty of manufacturing is proportionate to the amount of new technology in the product.
中文： 设计被高估了，制造被低估了。生产系统比产品本身多 1000%，可能 10000% 的工作量。特别是对于有新技术的产品。制造难度与产品中新技术的数量成正比。
Manufacturing Is the Moat
制造是护城河
English: Two things define manufacturing competitiveness: economies of scale and technology. If you maximize your level of technology and maximize your level of scale, this is obviously going to be the most competitive situation. That's why plants are so freaking giant.
中文： 两件事定义制造竞争力：规模经济和技术。如果你最大化你的技术水平和规模水平，这显然是最具竞争力的情况。这就是为什么工厂如此巨大。
English: Our plant in Texas starts from actual rail cars of raw materials coming in. We form the battery cell and the battery pack, build the motor, and cast the parts. We also have introduced a major innovation, which is to cast the entire front third and rear third of the car as a single piece. I got this idea from toy cars. I wondered, "Toys are cheap! How do they make toys?" "They just cast them." I was like, "Well, can you build a casting machine big enough for a car?" They said, "No one ever has." "Are we breaking any laws of physics?" "No…" "Well, let's just ask them." There were six major casting machine suppliers in the world at the time. Five of them said no and the sixth said maybe. I said, "I'll take that as a yes."
中文： 我们在德克萨斯州的工厂从实际的原材料铁路车厢开始。我们制造电池单元和电池组，建造电机，铸造部件。我们还引入了一项重大创新，即将汽车的前三分之一和后三分之一整体铸造成一个部件。我从玩具车上得到这个想法。我想，"玩具很便宜！他们如何制造玩具？""他们只是铸造它们。"我想，"好吧，你能建造一台足够大的铸造机来铸造汽车吗？"他们说，"从来没有人这样做过。""我们违反任何物理定律吗？""不……""好吧，让我们问问他们。"当时世界上有六家主要的铸造机供应商。其中五家说不，第六家说可能。我说，"我就当那是同意了。"
English: Prototypes are easy and fun. Reaching volume production with a reliable product at an affordable price is excruciatingly difficult.
中文： 原型很容易也很有趣。以负担得起的价格实现可靠产品的批量生产极其困难。
BECOMING A FOUNDER
成为创始人
English: You want to embark on something where success is certain to be one of the possible outcomes.
中文： 你想开始一件事，其中成功肯定是可能的结果之一。
English: Q: What was the path to starting your first company?
中文： 问：你创办第一家公司的路径是什么？
English: Growing up in South Africa, it seemed like a lot of the advanced technology was being produced in America and Silicon Valley, especially. I wanted to go where I could be involved in the creation of new technology. That's what took me first to Canada (because I could get citizenship in Canada through my mom) and then ultimately to the US.
中文： 在南非长大，似乎很多先进技术都在美国，特别是硅谷生产。我想去一个我可以参与创造新技术的地方。这就是我先去加拿大（因为我可以通过我妈妈获得加拿大公民身份）然后最终去美国的原因。
English: When I was seventeen, I got my Canadian passport. Three weeks later I was in Canada. I left South Africa and landed in Montreal. I arrived with a backpack, a suitcase of books, and $2,000.
中文： 十七岁时，我拿到了加拿大护照。三周后我就在加拿大了。我离开南非，降落在蒙特利尔。我带着一个背包、一箱书和 2000 美元到达。
English: I stayed in a youth hostel for a few days, then bought a bus ticket for one hundred bucks to go across the country, making stops along the way.
中文： 我在青年旅社住了几天，然后花一百美元买了一张巴士票穿越全国，沿途停靠。
English: I managed to get to Swift Current in Saskatchewan. My cousin's son had a wheat farm where I worked for about six weeks, as I turned eighteen. We did a barn raising, cleared out the wheat bins and grain silos, and worked the vegetable patch.
中文： 我设法到达了萨斯喀彻温省的斯威夫特卡伦特。我表哥的儿子有一个小麦农场，我在那里工作了大约六周，当时我刚满十八岁。我们建谷仓、清理小麦仓和谷仓，并在菜园工作。
English: Then I got back on the bus and went to Vancouver. I had a half-uncle there in the lumber industry. I ended up working at a lumber mill chainsawing logs and cleaning out the pulp boiler. That might be the hardest job I've had. You had to crawl through this little tunnel in a hazmat suit and then shovel this steaming sand and mush out of the boilers to clean them out. There's only one entrance or exit, a little tunnel. If you're claustrophobic, it would be real bad. It did not seem safe. But it was the highest-paying job at the employment office. Other jobs were under eight dollars an hour, and this one was eighteen dollars an hour.
中文： 然后我回到巴士上去了温哥华。我在那里有个半叔叔在木材行业。我最终在一家锯木厂用电锯锯木头和清理纸浆锅炉。那可能是我做过的最艰难的工作。你必须穿着防护服爬过这个小隧道，然后把锅炉里的蒸汽沙子和糊状物铲出来清理干净。只有一个入口或出口，一个小隧道。如果你有幽闭恐惧症，那就很糟糕了。这看起来不安全。但那是就业办公室薪水最高的工作。其他工作每小时不到八美元，这份工作是每小时十八美元。
English: I worked there as a lumberjack doing odd jobs for a few months. Then I applied for college, and went to Queen's University in Kingston. I was there for a couple years before applying to UPenn. I didn't think I'd be able to go because I was paying my own way through university. That's not too hard in Canada because tuition is highly subsidized, but in the US college is more expensive.
中文： 我在那里当伐木工做了几个月的零工。然后我申请了大学，去了金斯顿的女王大学。我在那里待了几年，然后申请了宾夕法尼亚大学。我认为我去不了，因为我自己支付大学费用。这在加拿大不太难，因为学费有大量补贴，但在美国大学更贵。
English: I paid my own way through college and dropped out of Stanford grad school with $110K in college debt.
中文： 我自己支付大学费用，从斯坦福研究生院退学时背负着 11 万美元的大学债务。
English: Physics and computer science were always my two best subjects, because I wanted to figure out the nature of the universe. I thought I might do physics at a particle accelerator, banging particles together to see what happens in a research facility. Then, the supercollider got canceled in the US, and I realized I could study for years to work at a collider, and then the government could arbitrarily cancel it. Decision made: I could not do that.
中文： 物理学和计算机科学一直是我最好的两门学科，因为我想弄清楚宇宙的本质。我想我可能会在粒子加速器做物理学，在研究设施中将粒子碰撞在一起看会发生什么。然后，超级对撞机在美国被取消了，我意识到我可能会学习多年在对撞机工作，然后政府可以随意取消它。决定已定：我不能那样做。
English: Q: How did you decide to leave your PhD program and start your first company?
中文： 问：你如何决定离开博士项目并创办你的第一家公司？
English: Because of my interest in electric cars as a college student, I took an internship at a company that made high-energy-density capacitors. My intent was to get a PhD in energy storage solutions for electric vehicles. I was going to Stanford to study material science and the physics of high-energy-density capacitors for use in electric vehicles.
中文： 由于我作为大学生对电动汽车的兴趣，我在一家制造高密度电容器的公司实习。我的意图是获得电动汽车储能解决方案的博士学位。我要去斯坦福学习材料科学和高密度电容器的物理学，用于电动汽车。
English: But, I wasn't sure if my work during that PhD would actually be useful. I was concerned it could be academically useful but not practically useful.
中文： 但是，我不确定我在博士期间的工作是否真的有用。我担心它可能在学术上有用但在实践中无用。
English: Success on an academic level would have been quite likely. I could publish a paper, but most papers are pretty useless.
中文： 在学术层面成功是相当可能的。我可以发表论文，但大多数论文都很无用。
English: Once in a while you get something spectacular but it's pretty rare. How many PhD papers are actually used by someone, ever? Percentagewise, not many. You add a leaf to the tree of knowledge, but that leaf could be saying, Nope, not possible. This is not good enough technology to be used in an electric vehicle. There goes seven years of my life.
中文： 偶尔你会得到一些惊人的东西，但这很罕见。有多少博士论文真的被人使用过？按百分比，不多。你为知识之树添加了一片叶子，但那片叶子可能在说，不，不可能。这不够好的技术不能用于电动汽车。我七年的生命就这样没了。
English: Not that I cared about the PhD, actually. I just needed a lab. I could spend years working in a lab and maybe the technology would work…or maybe it wouldn't.
中文： 其实我不是在乎博士学位。我只是需要一个实验室。我可能会花几年时间在实验室工作，也许技术会成功……也许不会。
English: I was not sure success was even a possibility. I thought maybe it was, but I wasn't sure.
中文： 我不确定成功是否有可能。我想也许有，但我不确定。
English: Then the internet started taking off. It was clear to me the internet was happening in 1995, although most people weren't aware of it then. I was pretty sure success was one of the possible outcomes for an internet company. I knew watching the internet get built while doing a PhD would be frustrating. I decided to put graduate school on hold and start an internet company.
中文： 然后互联网开始起飞。我很清楚互联网在 1995 年正在发生，尽管当时大多数人没有意识到。我相当确定成功是互联网公司的可能结果之一。我知道在做博士时看着互联网建立会令人沮丧。我决定把研究生院搁置一边，创办一家互联网公司。
English: I thought I'd be able to come back to electric vehicles. I figured electric vehicle technology and energy storage technology would have a natural progression, and that ended up happening.
中文： 我想我能够回到电动汽车。我认为电动汽车技术和储能技术会有一个自然的发展，结果确实如此。
English: In 1995, it was not obvious you could make any money on the internet. Until Netscape went public in late 1995, nobody thought you could make a valuable internet company. Now it seems obvious. But back then, it was not at all.
中文： 1995 年，很明显你不能在互联网上赚钱。直到网景在 1995 年末上市，没有人认为你可以创建一家有价值的互联网公司。现在这似乎很明显。但那时，完全不是这样。
English: Humanity was effectively becoming a superorganism, qualitatively different from what it had been before. I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to help build humanity's nervous system.
中文： 人类实际上正在成为一个超级有机体，与以前有质的不同。我想成为其中的一部分。我想帮助建立人类的神经系统。
English: The internet turned out to be a good idea for my first company because software is a low-capital endeavor. I didn't have any money, and had a bunch of student debt. You don't need a lot of tooling and equipment to get started. Software you can just write by yourself. It's not capital intensive. Starting something software-related as your first company is much, much easier.
中文： 互联网结果是我第一家公司的一个好主意，因为软件是低资本的努力。我没有任何钱，还有一堆学生债务。你不需要很多工具和设备就可以开始。软件你可以自己写。它不是资本密集型的。以软件相关的东西作为你的第一家公司要容易得多。
Starting Zip2
创办 Zip2
English: When we first started Zip2, our ambitions were quite low: make enough money to pay rent.
中文： 当我们刚开始 Zip2 时，我们的野心很低：赚足够的钱付房租。
English: Q: When did you start your first company?
中文： 问：你什么时候开始你的第一家公司？
English: Starting a company was not actually the first thing I tried. I tried to get a job at Netscape, but they didn't reply to my emails. So I went to hang out in the lobby at Netscape. I didn't know who to talk to, and I was too shy to talk to anyone. I figured, "If I can't get a job, I'll just try writing my own software."
中文： 创办公司实际上不是我尝试的第一件事。我试图在网景找到工作，但他们没有回复我的电子邮件。所以我去网景的大厅闲逛。我不知道该和谁说话，我太害羞了不敢和任何人说话。我想，"如果我找不到工作，我就自己写软件。"
English: It wasn't actually from the desire to start a company. I just wanted to be part of building the internet in some way. Since I couldn't get a job at an internet company, I had to start one myself.
中文： 实际上不是出于创办公司的愿望。我只是想以某种方式参与建设互联网。由于我无法在互联网公司找到工作，我不得不自己创办一家。
English: I wanted to try to build something useful, but I didn't think I would build anything particularly great. Probabilistically, greatness seemed unlikely, but I wanted to at least try.
中文： 我想尝试建造一些有用的东西，但我不认为我会建造任何特别伟大的东西。从概率上讲，伟大似乎不太可能，但我至少想试试。
English: We started off building maps, directions, and classified ads. It was, to the best of my knowledge, the first map and directions on the internet. There may still be some patents—or maybe they lapsed at this point. (Note from Eric: there is, patent #5944769.) The whole initial code base I wrote myself because there wasn't anyone else. It was just me.
中文： 我们开始制作地图、方向和分类广告。据我所知，这是互联网上的第一个地图和方向。可能还有一些专利——或者也许它们现在已经失效了。（埃里克的注释：有，专利号 5944769。）整个初始代码库我自己写的，因为没有其他人。只有我。
English: I was twenty-four at the time and only had a few thousand dollars saved. I convinced my brother to join, and he brought about five thousand dollars, which was a lot for us. For the first few months, we only had one computer. When the website wasn't working, it was because I was compiling code. The website was up during the day; I was coding at night, seven days a week, all the time. We more or less squatted in the office because the landlord was always out of the country, and nobody was using it.
中文： 我当时二十四岁，只存了几千美元。我说服我弟弟加入，他带了大约五千美元，这对我们来说很多。在最初的几个月里，我们只有一台电脑。当网站不工作时，是因为我在编译代码。网站白天运行；我晚上编码，一周七天，一直如此。我们或多或少 squatting 在办公室里，因为房东总是在国外，没有人用它。
English: Soon, there were six of us. Me, my brother, a friend of my mom's, and three salespeople we hired on contingency by putting an ad in the newspaper.
中文： 很快，我们有六个人。我、我弟弟、我妈妈的一个朋友，以及我们通过报纸广告雇佣的三个销售人员。
English: Things were pretty tough in the early going. I didn't have any money. In fact, I had negative money because of a huge student debt. I couldn't afford an apartment and an office, so I rented an office because that was cheaper. I slept on the futon at the office and showered at the YMCA. I briefly had a girlfriend in that period and to stay with me, she had to sleep in the office. I was in the best shape—every day a workout, shower, and you're good to go!
中文： 早期的事情相当艰难。我没有任何钱。事实上，我有负钱，因为巨额学生债务。我买不起公寓和办公室，所以我租了一间办公室，因为那更便宜。我睡在办公室的蒲团上，在基督教青年会洗澡。那段时间我短暂有一个女朋友，为了和我在一起，她不得不睡在办公室里。我状态最好——每天锻炼、洗澡，就可以出发了！
English: There was a small internet service provider on the floor below us, so we drilled a hole through the floor and connected a modem cable. That got us our internet connection for one hundred bucks a month. We had a tiny revenue stream, but an absurdly tiny burn rate. We actually had more revenue than we had expenses. When we talked to VCs (venture capitalists), we could say we were profitable.
中文： 我们楼下有一家小型互联网服务提供商，所以我们在地板上钻了一个洞，连接了一根调制解调器电缆。这让我们以每月一百美元的价格获得了互联网连接。我们有很小的收入流，但燃烧率小得荒谬。我们实际上收入比支出多。当我们与风险投资家交谈时，我们可以说我们是盈利的。
English: Most venture capitalists wouldn't take a meeting with us, though. They said, "Who's made money on the internet? No one. Okay, pass."
中文： 不过，大多数风险投资家不愿与我们会面。他们说，"谁在互联网上赚到钱了？没有人。好吧，跳过。"
English: There was a lot more interest in the internet following the Netscape IPO (initial public offering). Our software was more impressive by then, too. Mohr Davidow Ventures (a VC firm) invested $3 million for 60 percent of the company, which we thought was crazy. They're going to give us money for nothing? They must be mad. It seemed insane to give us so much money for a company that consisted of six people at the time. But it worked out well for them.
中文： 网景首次公开募股后，人们对互联网的兴趣大增。那时我们的软件也更令人印象深刻。Mohr Davidow Ventures（一家风险投资公司）投资 300 万美元购买公司 60% 的股份，我们认为这很疯狂。他们会白给我们钱？他们一定疯了。给我们这么多钱换取当时只有六个人的公司似乎很疯狂。但这对他们来说效果很好。
English: Q: How did the original idea for Zip2 come about?
中文： 问：Zip2 的最初想法是如何产生的？
English: We needed to build something that would earn money quickly. We thought the media industry would need help converting their content from print to electronic, and they clearly had money. If we could help them move to the internet, maybe we could generate revenue. There was no advertising revenue on the internet at the time. That was the basis of Zip2.
中文： 我们需要建造一些能快速赚钱的东西。我们认为媒体行业需要帮助将他们的内容从印刷转换为电子，他们显然有钱。如果我们能帮助他们转向互联网，也许我们可以产生收入。当时互联网上没有广告收入。这就是 Zip2 的基础。
English: We hired a lot more people and wrote software to bring newspapers online. Knight Ridder, New York Times Company, and Hearst all became investors and customers. And at one point, Zip2 was responsible for a significant section of the New York Times Company website. I got to know the media industry well.
中文： 我们雇佣了更多的人，编写软件将报纸上线。骑士里德、纽约时报公司和赫斯特都成为投资者和客户。在某个时候，Zip2 负责纽约时报公司网站的重要部分。我很好地了解了媒体行业。
English: The challenge was too much control by the existing media companies. They had too many board seats and too much voting control over Zip2. They kept trying to push the company in directions that made no sense. We actually had good software—comparable to Yahoo! or Excite at the time. It was all being forced through media companies, who would not fully use it. We built the best technology, but it wasn't being deployed properly.
中文： 挑战是现有媒体公司的控制太多。他们有太多的董事会席位和对 Zip2 的太多投票控制权。他们不断试图将公司推向毫无意义的方向。我们实际上有很好的软件——当时可与雅虎或 Excite 相媲美。它都被迫通过媒体公司，他们不会充分利用它。我们建造了最好的技术，但它没有被正确部署。
English: It's a bit like building F-22 fighter jets and selling them to people who roll them down the hill at each other. Not the way to use the technology!
中文： 这有点像建造 F-22 战斗机，然后卖给互相从山上滚下来的人。这不是使用技术的方式！
English: That's when I realized you want to sell your products straight to the end consumer. If you've got great technology, go directly to the end consumer. Don't sell it to some bonehead legacy company that doesn't understand how to use it.
中文： 那时我意识到你想直接把产品卖给最终消费者。如果你有很好的技术，直接去最终消费者。不要把它卖给一些不懂如何使用它的愚蠢传统公司。
English: Fortunately, Compaq came along. We had the opportunity to sell Zip2 to Compaq in early 1999 and accepted that offer. It was a little over $300 million in cash. Cash is a currency I highly recommend.
中文： 幸运的是，康柏出现了。我们在 1999 年初有机会将 Zip2 出售给康柏，并接受了那个报价。那是超过 3 亿美元的现金。现金是我强烈推荐的货币。
English: To this day, that moment astonishes me. At the time I was living in a house with four housemates. Literally, a check came in my mailbox. I was like, "This is insane. What if somebody…? I mean, I guess they'd have trouble cashing it?" Seems like a weird way to send money. My bank account went from $5,000 to $21,005,000.
中文： 直到今天，那一刻仍然让我惊讶。当时我和四个室友住在一所房子里。真的，一张支票出现在我的邮箱里。我想，"这太疯狂了。如果有人……？我的意思是，我想他们兑现会有困难？"这似乎是一种奇怪的汇款方式。我的银行账户从 5000 美元变成了 21,005,000 美元。
English: Immediately after the sale, I didn't take any time off. I still had to pay taxes, then I ended up putting almost all of that into X.com (which became PayPal). This was early 1999, and there were a lot of opportunities remaining on the internet.
中文： 出售后，我没有休息。我仍然需要纳税，然后我最终把几乎所有钱都投入了 X.com（后来成为 PayPal）。这是 1999 年初，互联网上还有很多机会。
English: I've always wanted to push my chips back on the table or play the next level of the game. I'm not good at sitting back.
中文： 我一直想把筹码推回桌上或玩游戏的下一级。我不擅长袖手旁观。
Going All In, Again (Zip2 Earnings into PayPal)
再次全力以赴（Zip2 收益投入 PayPal）
English: It was frustrating.
中文： 这令人沮丧。
English: We built incredible technology at Zip2, and it had not been used. I wanted to build another internet company to show technology can be extremely effective when used properly.
中文： 我们在 Zip2 建造了令人难以置信的技术，但它没有被使用。我想再建一家互联网公司，以表明技术如果正确使用可以非常有效。
English: I felt like we had our wings clipped somewhat with Zip2. I wanted to avoid being constrained by our customers like that, and go direct-to-consumer. That's what motivated me to start PayPal.
中文： 我觉得我们在 Zip2 的翅膀被剪掉了。我想避免像那样受到客户的限制，直接面向消费者。这就是我创办 PayPal 的动机。
English: Q: How did you come up with the idea for PayPal?
中文： 问：你是如何想出 PayPal 的想法的？
English: I thought, What was essentially digital? What exists in the form of information, but is not high bandwidth? In 1999, most people still had modems, so video was not really feasible. Money is low bandwidth and mostly digital. What can we do to make money work better?
中文： 我想，本质上是数字的是什么？什么以信息形式存在，但不是高带宽？1999 年，大多数人仍然有调制解调器，所以视频不太可行。钱是低带宽且主要是数字的。我们能做什么让钱更好地工作？
English: Money is like a database for guiding people to decide what they should do. You can think of banks as a set of databases.
中文： 钱就像一个数据库，指导人们决定他们应该做什么。你可以把银行看作一组数据库。
English: The 1990s financial infrastructure was a bunch of ancient mainframes, running ancient code, doing batch processing with poor security, and a series of heterogeneous databases. A herky-jerky frickin' monstrosity.
中文： 1990 年代的金融基础设施是一堆古老的大型机，运行古老的代码，进行安全性差的批处理，以及一系列异构数据库。一个颠簸的该死的怪物。
English: From an information theory standpoint, finance would be much better if it could be real-time, secure, and fast. Essentially just one real-time database. Let's try to build that.
中文： 从信息论的角度来看，如果金融能够实时、安全和快速，会好得多。基本上就是一个实时数据库。让我们试着建造那个。
English: Q: Can you explain the PayPal idea from an information theory perspective?
中文： 问：你能从信息论角度解释 PayPal 的想法吗？
English: Think of money as information. People often think money has power in and of itself. It does not. Money is just information. Money is a database for resource allocation across time and space.
中文： 把金钱看作信息。人们经常认为金钱本身有权力。它没有。金钱只是信息。金钱是一个跨时间和空间资源配置的数据库。
English: Let's try thinking in the limit, as I explained before. If you are stranded on a tropical island with a trillion dollars, it's useless. On the island there are no resources to allocate, except yourself, so money doesn't help. If you're stranded with no food, all the Bitcoin in the world will not stop you from starving.
中文： 让我们尝试用极限思维，正如我之前解释的。如果你被困在热带岛屿上，有一万亿美元，那是无用的。在岛上没有资源可分配，除了你自己，所以钱没有帮助。如果你被困没有食物，世界上所有的比特币都不会阻止你挨饿。
English: You need something to create ratios of value between products and services. In an economy, you have a massive number of products and services. You can't trade for everything. That would be extremely unwieldy. You need something to create the ratio of exchange between goods and services. You also need something that allows us to shift obligations across time, like debt and equity.
中文： 你需要一些东西来创建产品和服务之间的价值比率。在经济中，你有大量的产品和服务。你不能交换所有东西。那将非常笨重。你需要一些东西来创建商品和服务之间的交换比率。你还需要一些东西让我们能够跨时间转移义务，如债务和股权。
English: The quality of money as a system is a function of different variables. Just like an internet connection, you want high bandwidth, low latency, and few errors.
中文： 金钱作为系统的质量是不同变量的函数。就像互联网连接一样，你想要高带宽、低延迟和少错误。
English: What PayPal really did was help improve the bandwidth—the speed at which money could move. Instead of mailing checks back and forth, you could do real-time exchange of money online. Sellers could then ship items immediately instead of waiting for a check and then for the bank to clear it.
中文： PayPal 真正做的是帮助提高带宽——金钱可以移动的速度。你可以在线实时交换金钱，而不是来回邮寄支票。卖家可以立即发货，而不是等待支票然后等待银行清算。
English: We should look at currencies from an information theory standpoint. Whichever has least error and latency will win.
中文： 我们应该从信息论的角度看待货币。错误和延迟最少的将获胜。
English: That's what X.com originally was. I thought we should try to do all the financial things as well—not just payments. I still think that's what PayPal should have done, but whatever. It's water under the bridge at this point.
中文： 这就是 X.com 最初的样子。我想我们也应该尝试做所有金融事情——不仅仅是支付。我仍然认为那是 PayPal 应该做的，但无论如何。这已经是过去式了。
English: I rolled most of my Zip2 money into X.com, investing $12.5 million. In 1999, Sequoia invested in X.com, buying $5 million in shares, and Mike Moritz joined the company's board. When Moritz invested, he said we should hire a CEO. I said, "Great, I don't want to be CEO." I had no desire to be a CEO. It's a lot of chores…being CEO sucks. He also told me, "Dude, you should not invest basically everything except your house and car in your startup."
中文： 我把大部分 Zip2 的钱投入 X.com，投资 1250 万美元。1999 年，红杉资本投资 X.com，购买 500 万美元的股份，迈克·莫里茨加入了公司董事会。当莫里茨投资时，他说我们应该雇佣一位 CEO。我说，"太好了，我不想当 CEO。"我没有当 CEO 的愿望。当 CEO 有很多杂事……当 CEO 很糟糕。他还告诉我，"伙计，你不应该除了房子和车之外把所有东西都投资到你的初创公司。"
English: I kept the chips on the table.
中文： 我把筹码留在桌上。
Listen Well, Correct Fast
好好倾听，快速纠正
English: The initial thought with X.com was to create a conglomeration of financial services, so you have one place where all your financial service needs could be seamlessly integrated and work smoothly.
中文： X.com 最初的想法是创建一个金融服务集团，这样你就有一个地方可以无缝集成所有你的金融服务需求并顺利工作。
English: We had a little feature: payments through email. When we showed the system to someone, we'd show the hard part first: the conglomeration of financial services. Nobody was interested.
中文： 我们有一个小功能：通过电子邮件支付。当我们向某人展示系统时，我们会先展示困难的部分：金融服务集团。没有人感兴趣。
English: Then we showed people email payments, which were relatively easy to build, and everybody was interested. So, we focused on email payments. That's what really got PayPal to take off.
中文： 然后我们向人们展示电子邮件支付，这相对容易构建，每个人都感兴趣。所以，我们专注于电子邮件支付。这才是真正让 PayPal 起飞的原因。
English: It's important to take feedback from your environment. If we hadn't responded to what people said, we probably would not have been successful. It's important to look for things like that, focus on them, and correct your prior assumptions. You want to close those loops as quickly and clearly as possible.
中文： 从环境中获取反馈很重要。如果我们没有回应人们所说的，我们可能不会成功。重要的是寻找这样的事情，专注于它们，并纠正你之前的假设。你想尽可能快速和清晰地关闭这些循环。
English: I'm trying to create an accurate mental model of reality. If I have a wrong view on something, or if there's a nuanced improvement that can be made, I say, "I used to think this, which turned out to be wrong—thank goodness I don't have that wrong belief anymore."
中文： 我试图创建一个准确的现实心理模型。如果我对某事有错误的看法，或者如果有细微的改进可以做，我会说，"我曾经这样想，结果证明是错的——感谢上帝我不再有那个错误的信念了。"
English: I'm a huge believer in taking feedback.
中文： 我非常相信接受反馈。
English: We took a similar approach with PayPal that worked at Zip2, which was to have a small group of very talented people, and keep it small. PayPal had maybe thirty engineers for a system which I would say is more sophisticated than the Federal Reserve clearing system.
中文： 我们对 PayPal 采用了与 Zip2 类似的行之有效的方法，就是拥有一小群非常有才华的人，并保持小规模。PayPal 大约有三十名工程师，用于一个我认为比美联储清算系统更复杂的系统。
English: Both Zip2 and PayPal operated like Silicon Valley startups. Pretty flat hierarchy, everybody had a similar desk, and anyone could talk to anyone.
中文： Zip2 和 PayPal 都像硅谷初创公司一样运营。相当扁平的层级，每个人都有类似的办公桌，任何人都可以和任何人交谈。
English: We had a philosophy of "best idea wins" as opposed to the person proposing the idea winning because of who they are. Even though there were times when I thought that should have been the way to go. Everyone was an equity stakeholder.
中文： 我们的理念是"最好的想法获胜"，而不是提出想法的人因为他们的身份而获胜。尽管有时我认为那应该是前进的方式。每个人都是股权利益相关者。
English: If there were two options, and one wasn't obviously better than the other, rather than spend time trying to pick which one was slightly better, we would just pick one and go. Sometimes we were wrong and picked the suboptimal path, but at least we moved fast.
中文： 如果有两个选项，一个并不明显优于另一个，与其花时间试图选择哪个稍微好一点，我们只会选择一个然后继续。有时我们错了，选择了次优路径，但至少我们移动得快。
English: Better to pick a path and keep moving than just vacillate endlessly on a decision.
中文： 最好选择一条路并继续前进，而不是在一个决定上无休止地摇摆不定。
English: We were focused on building the best product we possibly could. Both Zip2 and PayPal were product-focused companies. We didn't worry too much about intellectual property paperwork. We were incredibly obsessive about building the best possible customer experience. That was a far more effective selling tool than having a giant sales force or marketing gimmicks.
中文： 我们专注于建造我们能建造的最好的产品。Zip2 和 PayPal 都是以产品为中心的公司。我们不太担心知识产权文书工作。我们非常痴迷于建造最好的客户体验。那是一个比拥有庞大的销售团队或营销噱头更有效的销售工具。
English: Pay close attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends. It's incredibly helpful. This may sound like simple advice, but hardly anyone does it.
中文： 密切关注负面反馈，并征求它，特别是来自朋友的。这非常有帮助。这听起来像是简单的建议，但几乎没有人这样做。
Unite and Conquer
团结并征服
English: What matters to me is winning, and not in a small way.
中文： 对我来说重要的是获胜，而且不是小胜。
English: Around the same time I was starting X, another company formed called Confinity, which was Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Luke Nosek, David Sacks, Ken Howery, etc. At X.com, we had Jeremy Stoppelman, who created Yelp, and Roelof Botha, who went on to run Sequoia. Both companies had a crazy amount of talent.
中文： 大约在我创办 X 的同时，另一家公司成立了，名为 Confinity，成员是彼得·蒂尔、马克斯·列夫琴、卢克·诺塞克、大卫·萨克斯、肯·豪厄里等。在 X.com，我们有创建 Yelp 的杰里米·斯托普尔曼，以及后来经营红杉资本的罗洛夫·博塔。两家公司都有疯狂的才华。
English: Confinity started as a PalmPilot cryptography company, back when you could communicate through the infrared port of a PalmPilot. Then they evolved in the direction of payments as well. We were both in Palo Alto, a block away from each other—at one point, even in the same building. We were competing with each other like maniacs.
中文： Confinity 最初是一家 PalmPilot 加密公司，那时你可以通过 PalmPilot 的红外端口进行通信。然后他们也向支付方向发展。我们都在帕洛阿尔托，相隔一个街区——在某个时候，甚至在同一栋楼里。我们像疯子一样互相竞争。
English: Finally, we had coffee on University Avenue and said, "Hey, why don't we just combine our efforts? Otherwise we're gonna bludgeon each other to death." We knew we had to get that deal done fast or we were both gonna die.
中文： 最后，我们在大学大道喝咖啡，说，"嘿，我们为什么不联合我们的努力？否则我们会互相打死。"我们知道我们必须快速完成那笔交易，否则我们都会死。
English: So we merged Confinity with X.com and raised $100 million in three weeks during March of 2000. About a year later, we changed the company name to the product name, PayPal.
中文： 所以我们将 Confinity 与 X.com 合并，并在 2000 年 3 月的三周内筹集了 1 亿美元。大约一年后，我们将公司名称改为产品名称 PayPal。
English: We went from starting a company to fourteen months later merging and having a valuation of $500 million in March of 2000. It felt so sudden, like, "This is completely ridiculous."
中文： 我们从创办公司到十四个月后合并，在 2000 年 3 月估值达到 5 亿美元。感觉如此突然，就像，"这完全荒谬。"
English: In April 2000, the market went into freefall. The challenge was keeping the company alive for the next two years.
中文： 2000 年 4 月，市场陷入自由落体。挑战是让公司在接下来的两年里保持生存。
English: There was a lot of drama; it was a turbulent period. I didn't expect PayPal's growth rate to be what it was, and that created major problems. After the first month of the website being active, we had one hundred thousand customers. It was nutty. We definitely did not anticipate that.
中文： 有很多戏剧性；那是一个动荡时期。我没有预料到 PayPal 的增长率会是这样，这造成了重大问题。在网站活跃的第一个月后，我们有十万客户。这很疯狂。我们绝对没有预料到。
English: Q: What made PayPal's growth rate so dramatic?
中文： 问：是什么让 PayPal 的增长率如此惊人？
English: PayPal was a perfect case for viral marketing. Like Hotmail, one customer would be like a salesperson for you, bringing other customers. Customers would send money to a friend and bring that friend into the network. We had this exponential growth, where the more customers we had, the faster it grew. It was like bacteria in a petri dish, following an S-curve.
中文： PayPal 是病毒式营销的完美案例。像 Hotmail 一样，一个客户就像你的销售人员，带来其他客户。客户会向朋友汇款，并把那个朋友带入网络。我们有这种指数增长，客户越多，增长越快。这就像培养皿中的细菌，遵循 S 曲线。
English: We started off first by offering people twenty dollars if they opened an account and twenty dollars if they referred anyone. Then we dropped it to ten dollars. Then we dropped it to five dollars. As the network got bigger and bigger, the value of the network itself exceeded any sort of carrot that we could offer.
中文： 我们开始时提供二十美元，如果他们开设账户，再提供二十美元，如果他们推荐任何人。然后我们降到十美元。然后我们降到五美元。随着网络越来越大，网络本身的价值超过了我们能提供的任何胡萝卜。
English: We probably spent $60 or $70 million in incentives to build that network. That seems like a lot, but it built a very valuable network. The relative cost depends on your scale. That's a peanut to Google.
中文： 我们可能花费了 6000 万或 7000 万美元的激励来建立那个网络。这似乎很多，但它建立了一个非常有价值的网络。相对成本取决于你的规模。这对谷歌来说是小菜一碟。
English: Q: Leading through that kind of growth seems very challenging. How did you manage it all?
中文： 问：领导这种增长似乎非常有挑战性。你是如何管理这一切的？
English: I ran PayPal for about the first two years of its existence. We launched after year one, and by the end of year two we had a million customers. It gives you a sense for how fast things can grow. We didn't have a sales force, VP of sales, or VP of marketing and we didn't spend any money on advertising.
中文： 我经营 PayPal 大约前两年。我们在第一年后推出，到第二年底我们有一百万客户。这让你感受到事情可以增长多快。我们没有销售团队、销售副总裁或营销副总裁，我们也没有花任何钱做广告。
English: It wasn't easy, because we still had some bugs in the software. Even if the bug only occurs one in one thousand times, that's still a thousand angry customers shouting, "Where is my money!?"
中文： 这不容易，因为我们的软件仍然有一些漏洞。即使漏洞只发生千分之一，那仍然是一千个愤怒的客户大喊，"我的钱在哪里！？"
English: We had a customer service office on University Avenue in Palo Alto with five people. When something went wrong, customer service phones would explode. We had many challenges. Various financial regulatory agencies were trying to shut us down. The FTC was trying to shut us down. Visa, MasterCard, and eBay were all trying to have us shut down. There were a lot of battles.
中文： 我们在帕洛阿尔托大学大道有一个客户服务办公室，有五个人。当出现问题时，客服电话会爆炸。我们有很多挑战。各种金融监管机构试图关闭我们。联邦贸易委员会试图关闭我们。Visa、万事达卡和 eBay 都试图让我们关闭。有很多战斗。
English: It was a close call. We came close to dying in 2000 and 2001.
中文： 那是千钧一发。我们在 2000 年和 2001 年差点死掉。
From Exile to Exit
从流放至退出
English: I was away for two weeks and the management team decided I wasn't the right guy to run the company. Instead of fighting during a critical time, I thought it was best to concede.
中文： 我离开了两周，管理团队认为我不是经营公司的合适人选。我认为在关键时刻战斗不如让步。
English: It's not a good idea to leave the office when there are a lot of major things underway that are causing people a great deal of stress. I left for a trip, a combination of needing to raise money and I had gotten married earlier that year and had not had a vacation or honeymoon. It was kind of a combined financing trip and honeymoon. Also not a great idea.
中文： 当有很多重大事情正在进行，给人们带来很大压力时，离开办公室不是个好主意。我去旅行了，一方面需要筹集资金，另一方面我那年早些时候结婚了，还没有度假或蜜月。这有点像融资旅行和蜜月结合。也不是个好主意。
English: I got removed as CEO of PayPal because I wanted to do a bunch of things that seemed extremely risky. I think they would have worked out, but at a time when companies were dropping like flies, I was proposing we do all these things that sound risky—it was much too scary for the rest of the team.
中文： 我被解除 PayPal CEO 的职务，因为我想做一些看起来非常冒险的事情。我认为它们会成功，但在公司像苍蝇一样倒闭的时候，我提议我们做所有这些听起来冒险的事情——这对其他团队成员来说太可怕了。
English: I didn't agree with their conclusion, but I understood why they took the action they did. Peter, Max, David, and the other guys are smart people with the right motivations. They did what they thought was right, for the right reasons. The reasons weren't valid in my opinion but it's hard to argue with the ultimate outcome, which was positive.
中文： 我不同意他们的结论，但我理解他们为什么采取那样的行动。彼得、马克斯、大卫和其他人是聪明人，动机正确。他们出于正确的原因做了他们认为正确的事情。我认为这些理由不成立，但很难反驳最终的结果，那是积极的。
English: It would be easy to be bitter and hate them forever, but the better course of action is to turn the other cheek. I put a lot of effort into making things good between us, and they became good. I invested in some of Peter's companies, including Founders Fund, which is made up primarily of former PayPal people. Peter, who replaced me as CEO, later invested in SpaceX.
中文： 很容易心怀怨恨并永远恨他们，但更好的做法是宽容。我花了很多努力让我们之间的关系变好，它们确实变好了。我投资了彼得的一些公司，包括创始人基金，主要由前 PayPal 人员组成。彼得，他接替我当 CEO，后来投资了 SpaceX。
English: Life is too short for long-term grudges.
中文： 生命太短，不适合长期怀恨。
English: Q: What was the exit like?
中文： 问：退出是什么感觉？
English: In about February of 2002, PayPal went public. I think we were the only internet company to go public in the first part of 2002. It went reasonably well, although I can imagine we set a record on SEC rewrites. This was right around the time of Enron and other corporate scandals, so they put us through the wringer.
中文： 大约在 2002 年 2 月，PayPal 上市了。我想我们是 2002 年上半年唯一上市的互联网公司。进展相当顺利，虽然我可以想象我们在 SEC 重写方面创下了纪录。这正好是安然和其他公司丑闻的时候，所以他们把我们折腾了一番。
English: It was a tough, long-running battle between PayPal and eBay's payment system, and it was certainly challenging. There were times it felt like trying to win a land war in Asia. They got to set the ground rules. It was like trying to beat Microsoft inside their own operating system. It took a lot of effort to beat eBay in their own system. One of the long-term risks for PayPal was eBay would one day prevail. One way to retire that risk was to sell to eBay.
中文： PayPal 和 eBay 的支付系统之间是一场艰难、持久的战斗，确实很有挑战性。有时感觉就像试图在亚洲打赢一场陆地战争。他们可以制定基本规则。这就像试图在他们自己的操作系统内击败微软。在他们自己的系统内击败 eBay 需要很多努力。PayPal 的长期风险之一是 eBay 有一天会获胜。消除该风险的一种方法是卖给 eBay。
English: In October 2002, we struck a deal to sell PayPal to eBay for about $4.5 billion.
中文： 2002 年 10 月，我们达成了一项协议，以约 45 亿美元将 PayPal 出售给 eBay。
English: I could go and buy one of the islands of the Bahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build and create a new company. I haven't spent my winnings. I'm going to put almost all of it back into a new game.
中文： 我可以去买巴哈马的一个岛屿，把它变成我的个人领地，但我更有兴趣尝试建立和创造一家新公司。我没有花掉我的赢利。我要把几乎所有钱都投入一个新游戏。
BUILDING TESLA
建造特斯拉
English: Accelerating the removal of hydrocarbons from the crust and placing them in the atmosphere is unwise. This is one of the biggest problems of the twenty-first century. Hopefully this transition to sustainable energy occurs before it's too late.
中文： 加速从地壳中移除碳氢化合物并将它们放入大气中是不明智的。这是二十一世纪最大的问题之一。希望向可持续能源的过渡在太晚之前发生。
The Mission to Protect the Planet
保护地球的使命
English: There's no way we can conserve our way to a good future. We have to make energy sustainable.
中文： 我们无法通过节约走向美好的未来。我们必须让能源可持续。
English: Q: Why is the mission of Tesla so important to you?
中文： 问：为什么特斯拉的使命对你如此重要？
English: The overarching purpose of Tesla is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy toward a solar-electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution.
中文： 特斯拉的总体目标是帮助加快从开采和燃烧碳氢化合物经济向太阳能经济的转变，我认为这是主要的但不是唯一的可持续解决方案。
English: Energy output is the foundation of the economy, just like sunlight is the foundation of the ecosystem. To a first approximation, a country's goods and services production will be proportionate to its energy output.
中文： 能源产出是经济的基础，就像阳光是生态系统的基础一样。粗略地说，一个国家的商品和服务生产将与其能源产出成正比。
English: By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway, and that virtually all scientists agree dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane…the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.
中文： 根据定义，我们必须在某个时候实现可持续能源经济，否则我们将耗尽可燃烧的化石燃料，文明将崩溃。鉴于我们无论如何都必须摆脱化石燃料，而且几乎所有科学家都同意大幅增加大气和海洋碳水平是疯狂的……我们实现可持续性的速度越快越好。
English: I don't have any fundamental dislike of hydrocarbons. I simply look at the future and say, "What is the thing that will actually work?" Using a nonrenewable resource obviously will not work.
中文： 我对碳氢化合物没有任何根本性的厌恶。我只是展望未来并说，"什么才是真正有效的东西？"使用不可再生资源显然行不通。
English: There are time extensions on the game, but the game is going to end eventually. That should be obvious. If we rely on nonrenewables, it's like we're stuck in a room where the oxygen is gradually depleting. We want to get out of that room. The sooner we get out of that room, the better.
中文： 游戏有时间延长，但游戏最终会结束。那应该是显而易见的。如果我们依赖不可再生能源，就像我们被困在一个氧气逐渐耗尽的房间里。我们想离开那个房间。我们越早离开那个房间越好。
English: Q: How do you respond to people who don't see the problem with extraction?
中文： 问：你如何回应那些看不到开采问题的人？
English: It is dangerous to be extracting vast quantities of hydrocarbons from deep within the earth and putting them in the atmosphere. Sooner or later, something bad will happen. There are a lot of people, particularly in the US, who are vehemently against electric cars and sustainable energy. It's quite difficult to reason with them.
中文： 从地球深处开采大量碳氢化合物并将它们放入大气中是危险的。迟早会发生一些不好的事情。有很多人，特别是在美国，强烈反对电动汽车和可持续能源。很难与他们讲道理。
English: They'll say, "Well, some scientists don't think climate change is a problem."
中文： 他们会说，"嗯，一些科学家不认为气候变化是个问题。"
English: You can find some small number of people that will disagree with anything.
中文： 你可以找到少数人会不同意任何事情。
English: This reminds me of the tobacco industry. For the longest time you'd see ads where they claimed tobacco was healthy for you. It's hard to believe these days, but it's true.
中文： 这让我想起烟草行业。很长一段时间你会看到广告声称烟草对你健康。现在很难相信，但这是真的。
English: There were reports where there seemed to be a correlation between lung cancer and smoking, but tobacco companies would say, "Our scientists have conducted experiments and they show no relation at all!" It's complete nonsense.
中文： 有报告显示肺癌和吸烟之间似乎存在相关性，但烟草公司会说，"我们的科学家进行了实验，他们显示完全没有关系！"这完全是胡说八道。
English: Almost any reasonable scientist would say, "Yes, of course smoking causes lung cancer and all sorts of other bad things. Not definitively but it's extremely likely." Yet the tobacco industry would still say, "Scientists disagree!" because 1 or 2 percent of the scientific community didn't feel that way.
中文： 几乎任何合理的科学家都会说，"是的，当然吸烟会导致肺癌和各种其他坏事。不是绝对但极有可能。"然而烟草行业仍然会说，"科学家有分歧！"因为 1% 或 2% 的科学界不那样认为。
English: The public just hears "Scientists disagree!" rather than "99 percent of scientists think the other 1 percent are stupid."
中文： 公众只听到"科学家有分歧！"而不是"99% 的科学家认为另外 1% 是愚蠢的。"
English: The question isn't, "Can you prove we're making the planet warmer?" but, "Can you prove we're not?" And you can't.
中文： 问题不是，"你能证明我们正在让地球变暖吗？"而是，"你能证明我们没有吗？"你不能。
English: It makes me mad when smart, ethical scientists are accused of publishing climate papers for "grant money." They earn peanuts compared to their other opportunities and give that up to help the world. But their accusers earn billions by slowing down the growth of clean energy. Who is more credible?
中文： 当聪明、有道德的科学家被指控为了"资助资金"发表气候论文时，我很生气。与其他机会相比，他们赚的是 peanuts，放弃那些来帮助世界。但他们的指控者通过减缓清洁能源的增长赚取数十亿。谁更可信？
English: People often believe things inversely proportional to the evidence. It's so strange. Given a set of possible explanations, why pick the one that's least likely?
中文： 人们经常相信与证据成反比的事情。这很奇怪。给定一组可能的解释，为什么选择最不可能的？
English: Q: So it's not too late to turn things around?
中文： 问：所以扭转局面还为时不晚吗？
English: Humanity will solve sustainable energy if we continue to push hard. The future is bright for cheap, abundant energy. It will be possible to use that energy to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. It takes a lot of energy to do that carbon capture, because putting it into the atmosphere releases energy. To pull it out, you need to use a lot of energy.
中文： 如果我们继续努力，人类将解决可持续能源问题。廉价、丰富能源的未来是光明的。将有可能利用那种能量从大气中吸收碳。进行碳捕获需要大量能量，因为将其放入大气中会释放能量。要将其拉出，你需要使用大量能量。
English: But if we've got a lot of sustainable energy from wind and solar, we can sequester carbon. We can reverse the CO2 parts per million of the atmosphere and oceans and restore the climate.
中文： 但如果我们有大量来自风能和太阳能的可持续能源，我们可以隔离碳。我们可以逆转大气和海洋中的二氧化碳百万分比，并恢复气候。
English: I donated $100 million to a prize for the best carbon capture technology.
中文： 我捐赠了 1 亿美元作为最佳碳捕获技术的奖金。
English: We can create as much fresh water as we want. Earth is mostly water. We should call Earth "Water." It's 70 percent water by surface area. We just happen to be on the small bit that's land. With energy, we can turn ocean water into fresh water or irrigation water at low cost.
中文： 我们可以创造任意多的淡水。地球大部分是水。我们应该称地球为"水球"。按表面积计算，它 70% 是水。我们只是碰巧在那一小块陆地上。有了能源，我们可以低成本地将海水变成淡水或灌溉水。
English: When you burn fossil fuels, there's all these side reactions and toxic gasses of various kinds. A lot of little particulates that are bad for your lungs. All sorts of bad things are happening, which will go away with sustainable energy. The sky will be cleaner and quieter. The future is going to be good.
中文： 当你燃烧化石燃料时，会有所有这些副反应和各种有毒气体。很多对肺部有害的小颗粒。各种坏事正在发生，随着可持续能源它们将消失。天空将更清洁、更安静。未来将是美好的。
English: The purpose of Tesla was, and remains, accelerating the use of sustainable energy, so we can imagine far into the future and life is still good. That's what "sustainable" means. It's not some silly hippie thing—it matters for everyone.
中文： 特斯拉的目的过去是，现在仍然是，加速可持续能源的使用，这样我们可以想象遥远的未来，生活仍然美好。这就是"可持续"的意思。这不是什么愚蠢的嬉皮士东西——它对每个人都很重要。
Going All In, Again (PayPal Earnings into Tesla)
再次全力以赴（PayPal 收益投入特斯拉）
English: When you have a big technology change, it tends to come from new companies.
中文： 当你有重大技术变革时，它往往来自新公司。
English: A lot of entrepreneurial talent and financing goes to the internet. Other sectors like automotive, solar, and space don't see new entrants. Not a lot of entrepreneurs go into those areas, and not a lot of capital goes into those startups.
中文： 很多创业人才和资金流向互联网。其他行业如汽车、太阳能和太空没有新进入者。没有很多创业者进入这些领域，也没有很多资金流入那些初创公司。
English: This is a problem because innovation tends to come from new entrants to an industry. This is Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction. In an oligopoly, no one is forced to innovate.
中文： 这是个问题，因为创新往往来自行业的新进入者。这是熊彼特的创造性破坏理念。在寡头垄断中，没有人被迫创新。
English: New entrants drive innovation more than anything, which is why I have devoted my efforts to building new companies in those industries.
中文： 新进入者比任何其他东西都更能推动创新，这就是为什么我致力于在这些行业建立新公司。
English: These industries require quite a bit of capital to get going. My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180 million. I thought I would allocate half to SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. I thought that should be fine. I'd have $90 million left, and that's…a lot, you know?
中文： 这些行业需要相当多的资金才能启动。我从 PayPal 获得的税后收益大约是 1.8 亿美元。我想我会将一半分配给 SpaceX、特斯拉和 SolarCity。我想那应该没问题。我还剩下 9000 万美元，那是……很多，你知道吗？
English: But things cost more and took longer than I thought. Each one ended up costing double what I expected. I thought SpaceX would need $50 million. Tesla, I thought, would need $25 million, maybe $30 million. SolarCity…actually went really well.
中文： 但事情花费的比我想象的更多，耗时也更长。每个最终花费都是我预期的两倍。我以为 SpaceX 需要 5000 万美元。特斯拉，我认为，需要 2500 万美元，也许 3000 万美元。SolarCity……实际上进展非常顺利。
English: I ended up putting $10 million into Solar City, $70 million into Tesla, and $100 million into SpaceX. I literally had to borrow money for rent. It was a close call.
中文： 我最终向 Solar City 投入了 1000 万美元，向特斯拉投入了 7000 万美元，向 SpaceX 投入了 1 亿美元。我真的不得不借钱付房租。那是千钧一发。
Building the First Prototype
建造第一个原型
English: I first realized all vehicles would be electric in the early nineties, way before Tesla started. I was studying physics in my sophomore year in college; it was obvious to me even then.
中文： 我首先在九十年代初意识到所有车辆都将是电动的，远在特斯拉开始之前。我大二时正在学习物理学；那时对我来说就很明显了。
English: Getting the timing right was important. Lithium-ion batteries were the critical breakthrough needed for compelling electric cars. I knew it became possible to start Tesla because we went from the energy density of lead acid batteries to lithium-ion batteries—about a 4x energy density improvement. If you had a sixty-mile range with a lead-acid battery, you would have about one-hundred-forty-mile range with lithium-ion for the same weight.
中文： 把握正确的时机很重要。锂离子电池是引人注目的电动汽车所需的关键突破。我知道开始特斯拉变得可能，因为我们从铅酸电池的能量密度转向锂离子电池——大约 4 倍的能量密度改进。如果你用铅酸电池有 60 英里的续航里程，用锂离子电池相同重量下你将有大约 140 英里的续航里程。
English: A company called AC Propulsion had built a prototype, which had similar specs to what we eventually brought to market as the first Tesla Roadster. It was cool to see it in action, working. I tried hard to convince those guys to commercialize their car but they just did not want to do it.
中文： 一家名为 AC Propulsion 的公司已经建造了一个原型，其规格与我们最终作为第一辆特斯拉 Roadster 推向市场的规格相似。看到它实际运行很酷。我努力说服那些家伙将他们的汽车商业化，但他们就是不想这样做。
English: The car they wanted to make was like an electric Scion. I told them, "You guys, nobody's gonna pay $70,000 for an electric Scion. This is not gonna work. You will sell like fourteen of these things."
中文： 他们想制造的汽车就像电动 Scion。我告诉他们，"伙计们，没有人会花 7 万美元买一辆电动 Scion。这行不通。你们只会卖出大约十四辆这种东西。"
English: Though I also said, "Even though I think this is the dumbest idea ever, I will fund one tenth of it if you can find nine other people."
中文： 虽然我也说，"即使我认为这是有史以来最愚蠢的想法，如果你能找到其他九个人，我将资助其中的十分之一。"
English: I thought it would fail, but at least it was something. They didn't actually get it off the ground. Eventually I said, "If you guys are not going to commercialize this, do you mind if I do?"
中文： 我以为它会失败，但至少它是某种东西。他们实际上没有让它起步。最终我说，"如果你们不打算将这个商业化，你们介意我来做吗？"
English: We made so many mistakes in the beginning of Tesla. Almost every decision we made was wrong.
中文： 我们在特斯拉初期犯了太多错误。我们做的几乎每个决定都是错的。
English: The founding principles of Tesla were basically completely wrong. The premise was, "It's not gonna be that hard! We'll take the Lotus Elise, a nice lightweight car, and we'll take AC Propulsion's drive unit technology, put 'er together, and we'll have an electric car! It'll be great!"
中文： 特斯拉的创始原则基本上完全错误。前提是，"不会那么难！我们将采用莲花 Elise，一款不错的轻型汽车，我们将采用 AC Propulsion 的驱动单元技术，把它们组装在一起，我们就有一辆电动汽车！那会很棒！"
English: Except the AC Propulsion technology could not be industrialized. It was handcrafted electronics. In hot or cold weather, it would respond differently or not at all. It was impossible to scale this technology. You could only have finicky, individually made, superexpensive prototypes.
中文： 除了 AC Propulsion 技术无法工业化。它是手工制作的电子产品。在炎热或寒冷的天气下，它的反应会不同或根本没有反应。不可能规模化这项技术。你只能拥有挑剔的、单独制造的、超级昂贵的原型。
English: I remember in the early days giving a test ride to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whom I've known for a long time. There was some bug in the system and, damn it, the car would only go ten miles an hour. I was in the passenger seat saying, "Guys, I swear, it goes a lot faster than this."
中文： 我记得在早期给拉里·佩奇和谢尔盖·布林试驾，我认识他们很久了。系统中有一些漏洞，该死的，车只能以每小时 10 英里的速度行驶。我坐在副驾驶座上说，"伙计们，我发誓，它的速度比这快得多。"
English: They were kind enough to put a little investment into the company, despite the world's worst demo.
中文： 他们很好心地向公司投入了一点投资，尽管有世界上最糟糕的演示。
English: It was just a flat-out burning dumpster fire of stupidity. One example: The chassis had to be redesigned to fit the battery pack and became 40 percent heavier. This invalidated the crash testing Lotus had done.
中文： 这完全是一场愚蠢的燃烧垃圾场大火。一个例子：底盘必须重新设计以适应电池组，变得重了 40%。这使莲花所做的碰撞测试无效。
English: We ended up using none of the AC Propulsion technology. Something that looks cool and works as an individual prototype does not necessarily scale. Eventually maybe 7 percent of the parts of the original Tesla Roadster were common with the Lotus Elise. It would have been much smarter to start with a clean-sheet design and not try to modify something else.
中文： 我们最终没有使用任何 AC Propulsion 技术。看起来酷且作为单独原型有效的东西不一定能规模化。最终，也许原始特斯拉 Roadster 的 7% 的部件与莲花 Elise 通用。从空白设计开始而不是试图修改其他东西会明智得多。
English: I was going to start an electric vehicle (EV) company with JB Straubel based on the AC Propulsion prototype. When I asked AC Propulsion if it was okay to do that, they said, "There are some other people who want to create an EV company; would you like to join forces with them?" I said, "OK." That was a huge mistake. JB and I should have just started the company ourselves. My default inclination is to start things from scratch, even more so after this experience.
中文： 我本打算与 JB·斯特劳贝尔基于 AC Propulsion 原型创办一家电动汽车公司。当我问 AC Propulsion 是否可以这样做时，他们说，"还有一些人想创办一家电动汽车公司；你想和他们合作吗？"我说，"好的。"那是一个巨大的错误。JB 和我应该自己创办公司。我的默认倾向是从头开始做事，在这次经历之后更是如此。
English: The most important thing is to start somewhere, be prepared to question your assumptions, fix what you did wrong, and adapt to reality.
中文： 最重要的是从某个地方开始，准备好质疑你的假设，修正你做错的事情，并适应现实。
Becoming Tesla's CEO
成为特斯拉 CEO
English: The actual error was me trying to have my cake and eat it too: I just wanted to work on the technology and the product. I thought someone else could be the CEO and run the business, because I just like working on technology, product, and design. I was also doing SpaceX at the time, and our rockets were exploding.
中文： 实际的错误是我试图鱼与熊掌兼得：我只想专注于技术和产品。我以为其他人可以当 CEO 并经营业务，因为我只喜欢从事技术、产品和设计工作。我当时也在做 SpaceX，我们的火箭正在爆炸。
English: I had always wanted to build an electric car company. I thought this is how I could have my cake and eat it too. That was a huge mistake and fundamentally a moral error. When I joined, there were no employees. There was no intellectual property. There was no prototype, no nothing.
中文： 我一直想建立一家电动汽车公司。我想这就是我如何鱼与熊掌兼得的方式。那是一个巨大的错误，根本上是一个道德错误。当我加入时，没有员工。没有知识产权。没有原型，什么都没有。
English: I had provided about 95 percent of the money for Tesla, so I could become CEO anytime I wanted. And in the end, I had to frickin' become CEO of Tesla. I didn't want to be, but it was either that or the company was going to die.
中文： 我提供了特斯拉大约 95% 的资金，所以我可以随时成为 CEO。最终，我他妈的不得不成为特斯拉的 CEO。我不想成为，但那是要么那样要么公司就会死。
English: I never wanted to be a CEO, but I learned you could not truly be the chief technology or product officer unless you were the CEO.
中文： 我从不想成为 CEO，但我了解到你不能真正成为首席技术或产品官，除非你是 CEO。
English: Being CEO of two startups at the same time was not appealing. It shouldn't be appealing, by the way, for anyone thinking it was a good idea. It was a terrible idea.
中文： 同时担任两家初创公司的 CEO 并不吸引人。顺便说一句，对任何认为这是个好主意的人来说，它不应该有吸引力。那是一个糟糕的主意。
English: If you're a CEO of a company, the chore level is high, and if you don't do your chores then the company goes to hell. Frankly, I hate doing chores—who doesn't? There's a whole bunch of personnel and legal issues: things I don't find enjoyable to work on, but if I don't work on them, the company suffers. The sheer volume of work is insane.
中文： 如果你是一家公司的 CEO，杂事水平很高，如果你不做你的杂事，公司就会下地狱。坦率地说，我讨厌做杂事——谁不讨厌？有一大堆人事和法律问题：我不喜欢做的事情，但如果我不做，公司就会受苦。工作量简直是疯狂的。
English: The perception of me as a businessperson is fine, but my time is spent almost entirely with the engineering team. I'm a physics guy, an engineer. I'd prefer to be working on products. I do the business stuff because you have to do the business stuff. If you don't do the business stuff, somebody else could do it for you and then you could be in trouble.
中文： 把我看作商人的看法没问题，但我的时间几乎全部花在工程团队上。我是个物理学人，工程师。我更愿意从事产品工作。我做商业事情是因为你必须做商业事情。如果你不做商业事情，别人可以为你做，然后你可能会有麻烦。
English: I have a habit of biting off more than I can chew and just sitting there with chipmunk cheeks.
中文： 我有一个习惯，就是贪多嚼不烂，然后坐在那里像花栗鼠一样鼓着腮帮子。
Sequenced Strategy of Tesla
特斯拉的序列策略
English: Tesla is focused on making electric cars more affordable, which is tough. You need high volume to make cars affordable. When we started, other car companies made a lot more cars, so they got much better economies of scale. As we build more cars in higher volume, we make electric cars available to a wider range of people at lower cost.
中文： 特斯拉专注于让电动汽车更负担得起，这很难。你需要高产量才能让汽车负担得起。当我们开始时，其他汽车公司制造了更多的汽车，所以他们获得了更好的规模经济。当我们以更高的产量制造更多汽车时，我们以更低的成本让更广泛的人可以使用电动汽车。
English: The first version of a product has both a new-technology problem and a low-volume problem. You want to make your mistakes at a small scale, work the bugs out of the system, then reach for scale.
中文： 产品的第一个版本既有新技术问题又有低产量问题。你想在小规模上犯错误，解决系统中的漏洞，然后达到规模。
English: With a new product, the first thing engineers try to do is make it work. After you make it work, then you optimize and optimize and optimize.
中文： 对于新产品，工程师试图做的第一件事是让它工作。在你让它工作之后，然后你优化、优化、再优化。
English: The master plan was: 1. Build a sports car. 2. Use that money to build an affordable car. 3. Use that money to build an even more affordable car. (While doing above, also provide zero-emission electric power generation options.)
中文： 总体规划是：1. 建造一辆跑车。2. 用那笔钱建造一辆负担得起的汽车。3. 用那笔钱建造一辆更负担得起的汽车。（在做上述事情的同时，还提供零排放发电选项。）
English: We had to start off with step one, because it was all I could afford with what I made from PayPal. I thought our chances of success were so low, I didn't want to risk anyone's funds but my own in the beginning.
中文： 我们必须从第一步开始，因为那是我用 PayPal 赚的钱所能负担的全部。我认为我们的成功几率很低，一开始我不想冒险用任何人的资金，除了我自己的。
English: The list of successful car startups is short. The number of American car companies that haven't gone bankrupt is a grand total of two: Ford and Tesla. Starting a car company is idiotic, and an electric car company is idiocy squared.
中文： 成功汽车初创公司的名单很短。没有破产的美国汽车公司总数只有两家：福特和特斯拉。创办汽车公司是愚蠢的，电动汽车公司是平方愚蠢。
English: The idea is to drive to mass market as rapidly as possible, at the pace technology matures.
中文： 想法是尽可能快地推向大众市场，以技术成熟的速度。
English: As a little startup building a car, there was no way we could afford a giant plant to make hundreds of thousands of cars a year. That's the kind of volume you need to make cheap cars, and that plant would cost a billion dollars we didn't have.
中文： 作为一个建造汽车的小型初创公司，我们不可能负担得起一个每年制造数十万辆汽车的巨大工厂。那是制造便宜汽车所需的产量，那个工厂将花费我们是没有的 10 亿美元。
English: Our first car was a sports car, not because we think the world lacks a sports car, but because it was the right entry point for the market. If you have a new technology, the right place to enter is high unit-cost, low unit-volume.
中文： 我们的第一辆车是跑车，不是因为我们认为世界缺少跑车，而是因为那是市场的正确切入点。如果你有新技术，正确的进入地点是高单位成本、低单位产量。
English: A low-volume car means a much smaller, simpler factory with most things done by hand. Without economies of scale, anything we built would be expensive whether it was an economy sedan or a sports car. Some people would be prepared to pay a high price for a sports car. No one would pay $100K for an electric Honda Civic, no matter how cool it looked.
中文： 低产量汽车意味着一个更小、更简单的工厂，大部分事情都是手工完成的。没有规模经济，我们建造的任何东西都会很昂贵，无论是经济型轿车还是跑车。有些人愿意为跑车支付高价。没有人会为一辆电动本田思域支付 10 万美元，无论它看起来多酷。
English: When a new cell phone or a new laptop comes out, they tend to be expensive at first, because they're figuring out the issues and it takes time to optimize. Over time, with scale, that new technology becomes cheaper and cheaper.
中文： 当新手机或新笔记本电脑推出时，它们一开始往往很贵，因为他们正在解决问题，需要时间来优化。随着时间的推移，随着规模，那项新技术变得越来越便宜。
English: That is the unique and important thing Tesla accomplished. It is not the design of an electric vehicle, an electric vehicle prototype, or even low-volume production of a car. The hard part is not creating a prototype or going into limited production. There have been hundreds of car startups over the years that got that far.
中文： 这是特斯拉完成的独特而重要的事情。它不是电动汽车的设计、电动汽车原型，甚至不是汽车的低产量生产。困难的部分不是创建原型或进入有限生产。多年来有数百家汽车初创公司达到了那个程度。
English: The difficult thing—which has not been accomplished by an American car company in one hundred years—is reaching volume production without going bankrupt. That is the actual hard thing. The last American car company to reach volume production without going bankrupt was Chrysler. That was in the 1920s.
中文： 困难的事情——一百年来美国汽车公司没有完成的——是在不破产的情况下达到批量生产。那是真正的困难事情。上一家在不破产的情况下达到批量生产的美国汽车公司是克莱斯勒。那是在 1920 年代。
Keeping Tesla Alive
维持特斯拉生存
English: Tesla is alive by the skin of its teeth. So is SpaceX. If things had gone a little bit the other way, both companies would be dead.
中文： 特斯拉勉强存活。SpaceX 也是。如果事情稍有不同，两家公司都会死掉。
English: Man, this was grim. I thought this was going to turn into a tale of warning for hubris.
中文： 天哪，这很严峻。我以为这将变成一个傲慢的警告故事。
English: In 2008, SolarCity made a deal with Morgan Stanley, and Morgan Stanley had to renege on the deal because they themselves were running out of money. For a while it looked like all three companies were going to die. I was also going through a divorce. In addition to all that, I was getting dumped on, massively, in the press. That was definitely a low point.
中文： 2008 年，SolarCity 与摩根士丹利达成了一项协议，摩根士丹利不得不违背协议，因为他们自己资金不足。有一段时间看起来三家公司都要死掉。我也正在经历离婚。除此之外，我在媒体上被大量抨击。那绝对是一个低点。
English: In the midst of this, I faced one of the most difficult choices of my whole life. Tesla and SpaceX were both on the brink of bankruptcy.
中文： 在这其中，我面临了我一生中最艰难的选择之一。特斯拉和 SpaceX 都处于破产边缘。
English: I had maybe $30 million or $40 million left. I had two choices: I could put it all into one company, and the other would definitely die. I could split it between Tesla and SpaceX—but if I split it between the two, they both might die.
中文： 我大约还剩下 3000 万或 4000 万美元。我有两个选择：我可以把所有钱投入一家公司，另一家肯定会死。我可以在特斯拉和 SpaceX 之间分配——但如果我在两者之间分配，它们可能都会死。
English: When you put your blood, sweat, and tears into creating something, building something important—it's like a child. Which one will I let starve to death? I couldn't bring myself to do it. So, I split the money between the two.
中文： 当你投入心血、汗水和泪水创造某物，建造重要的东西——它就像一个孩子。我会让哪一个饿死？我无法让自己这样做。所以，我把钱分给了两家公司。
English: Trying to raise money for a startup electric car company in 2008 while GM was going bankrupt was difficult, to say the least. Eventually a subset of the previous investors came in, which included Antonio Gracias, Steve Jurvetson, and Aaron Price, all whom I hold a debt of gratitude to. They said they would invest as much as I put in, so I put in everything. All the money I had left. Literally everything. I didn't have a house. I was staying in Jeff Skoll's spare bedroom.
中文： 2008 年通用汽车破产时为一家初创电动汽车公司筹集资金至少可以说是困难的。最终一部分之前的投资者进来了，包括安东尼奥·格拉西亚斯、史蒂夫·尤尔韦特森和亚伦·普赖斯，我都欠他们人情。他们说他们会投入和我投入一样多的钱，所以我投入了一切。我剩下的所有钱。真的一切。我没有房子。我住在杰夫·斯科尔的备用卧室里。
English: (Note from Eric: At this point, Steve Jurvetson might interject with this context about entrepreneurial heroism. "Elon wrote a check for the entire remainder of his personal wealth to save the company, covering payroll during Christmas when no one else would. The economy was in a bad situation. Goldman just failed a private offering. It was the middle of the financial crisis. Tesla did not look appealing, either. There was no DOE loan. There was no Daimler deal. The car had a negative gross margin. Oh, and the largest shareholder was pissed off, going AWOL. It was ugly.")
中文： （埃里克的注释：此时，史蒂夫·尤尔韦特森可能会插入这段关于创业英雄主义的背景。"埃隆开了一张他个人财富全部剩余部分的支票来拯救公司，在圣诞节期间支付工资，而其他人都不愿意。经济状况糟糕。高盛刚刚私募发行失败。那是金融危机的中期。特斯拉看起来也没有吸引力。没有能源部贷款。没有戴姆勒交易。汽车有负的毛利率。哦，最大的股东生气了，擅自离岗。这很丑陋。"）
English: We closed that round at 6:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve 2008. It was the last hour of the last day possible. We would have bounced payroll two days after Christmas.
中文： 我们在 2008 年平安夜下午 6 点完成了那一轮融资。那是最后可能的最后一天的最后一小时。我们将在圣诞节后两天无法支付工资。
English: Eventually, Daimler executives came to visit. They showed up expecting a PowerPoint. While they were on their way over, we dropped a Roadster motor and battery into a Smart Car and let them drive it. They were shocked when it hit 60 mph in four seconds. Daimler ended up investing $50 million. If Daimler had not invested in Tesla at that time, we would have died.
中文： 最终，戴姆勒高管来访问。他们出现时期待一个 PowerPoint。在他们来的路上，我们将 Roadster 电机和电池放入一辆 Smart 车，让他们驾驶。当它在四秒内达到 60 英里/小时时，他们很震惊。戴姆勒最终投资了 5000 万美元。如果戴姆勒当时没有投资特斯拉，我们会死掉。
English: It's definitely stressful when death is inches from your face, trying to eat your face off—like right there and the foam is spattering on you.
中文： 当死亡离你只有几英寸，试图吞噬你的脸——就像在那里，泡沫溅在你身上时，绝对有压力。
English: For a while all I could think was, "We need to live. How do we live?"
中文： 有一段时间我唯一能想的是，"我们需要活下去。我们如何活下去？"
English: At both SpaceX and Tesla in 2008, if we'd paid our suppliers on time we would have gone bankrupt immediately.
中文： 2008 年在 SpaceX 和特斯拉，如果我们按时支付供应商，我们会立即破产。
The Edge of Sanity
理智的边缘
English: Q: How do you prioritize with so many things going on at once?
中文： 问：当有这么多事情同时发生时，你如何确定优先级？
English: Prioritizing has usually been out of desperation, not selection. It's not, "Oh, let's sit back and leisurely decide how we shall spend these resources." It's, "This isn't working, if we don't make it work, we're gonna go bankrupt, so we better make it work."
中文： 确定优先级通常是出于绝望，而不是选择。不是，"哦，让我们坐下来悠闲地决定我们如何花费这些资源。"而是，"这行不通，如果我们不让它行不通，我们会破产，所以我们最好让它行得通。"
English: We messed up almost every aspect of the Model 3 production line. There were so many mistakes, the entire company had to be devoted to fixing them. We took everyone off every other project—we all started working on the Model 3. We had to make it work or there wouldn't be any more Tesla.
中文： 我们搞砸了 Model 3 生产线的几乎每个方面。有太多错误，整个公司都必须致力于修复它们。我们把所有人从其他项目中撤出——我们都开始致力于 Model 3。我们必须让它行得通，否则就不会再有特斯拉了。
English: There was no choice. We had to get to high-volume production. It was a chicken-and-egg situation. You can't make the car at an affordable price unless you have high volume. Without high volume, you can't sell at an affordable price. So what do you do?
中文： 没有选择。我们必须达到高产量。这是一个鸡和蛋的情况。除非你有高产量，否则你无法以负担得起的价格制造汽车。没有高产量，你就无法以负担得起的价格销售。那么你做什么？
English: You take a giant flying leap at high volume and hope you can grab a cliff ledge with your fingertips.
中文： 你在高产量上进行一次巨大的飞跃，希望你的指尖能抓住悬崖边缘。
English: I felt like Indiana Jones running through the temple. There's a huge boulder chasing you and you need to jump across a giant pit in the ground. If you slow down, the boulder will crush you, and if you don't make the leap, you'll die in the pit. That's prioritizing.
中文： 我感觉像印第安纳·琼斯在寺庙里奔跑。有一个巨大的巨石追赶你，你需要跳过地上的一个巨大坑。如果你慢下来，巨石会压碎你，如果你不跳跃，你会死在坑里。这就是确定优先级。
English: Q: How did you motivate the team to do whatever it takes?
中文： 问：你如何激励团队不惜一切代价？
English: I told them we had to go ultrahardcore. They had to prepare for a level of intensity greater than anything they had experienced before.
中文： 我告诉他们我们必须超级硬核。他们必须准备好比他们以前经历过的任何强度都更高的强度水平。
English: I lived in the Fremont and Nevada factories for three years fixing that production line, running around like a maniac through every part of that factory, living with the team. I slept on the floor so the team going through a hard time could see me on the floor and know I was not in some ivory tower. Whatever pain they experienced, I had more.
中文： 我在弗里蒙特和内华达工厂住了三年，修复那条生产线，像疯子一样在工厂的每个部分跑来跑去，与团队生活在一起。我睡在地板上，这样经历困难的团队可以看到我在地板上，知道我不在某个象牙塔里。无论他们经历什么痛苦，我都有更多。
English: I worked to the edge of sanity. There wasn't any other way to make it work but three years of hell. From 2017 to 2019, I experienced the longest period of excruciating pain in my life. There wasn't any other way, and we still barely made it. We were on the ragged edge of bankruptcy the entire time. Three years of pain, but it had to be done or Tesla would be dead.
中文： 我工作到理智的边缘。没有其他方法让它行得通，除了三年的地狱。从 2017 年到 2019 年，我经历了我一生中最长的极度痛苦时期。没有其他方法，我们仍然勉强成功。我们一直处于破产的边缘。三年的痛苦，但必须这样做，否则特斯拉就会死掉。
English: At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on Earth. I can tell you how every damn part in that car is made. That's what happens when you live in the factory for three years.
中文： 在这一点上，我认为我比地球上任何活着的人都更了解制造。我可以告诉你那辆车里的每个该死的部件是如何制造的。那就是当你在工厂里住了三年会发生的事情。
A Whole New Kind of Car Company
一种全新的汽车公司
English: Ultimately, what we induce other companies to do will have a greater impact than the cars we make ourselves.
中文： 最终，我们促使其他公司做的事情将比我们自己制造的汽车产生更大的影响。
English: Q: A Tesla is a very different product, but how different is Tesla as a company from a traditional auto company?
中文： 问：特斯拉是一个非常不同的产品，但作为一家公司，特斯拉与传统汽车公司有多不同？
English: A typical car company manages a supply chain, assembles vehicles, and sends them to dealers. They might make the engine, but most of the actual technology development and parts manufacturing is done by suppliers. Most of the vehicle software is done by suppliers too. The amount of "real work" done by car companies like GM or Ford is not as much as you think. They don't do sales or service either; dealerships do.
中文： 典型的汽车公司管理供应链，组装车辆，并将它们发送给经销商。他们可能制造发动机，但大部分实际技术开发和部件制造都是由供应商完成的。大部分车辆软件也由供应商完成。像通用或福特这样的汽车公司做的"真正工作"没有你想象的那么多。他们也不做销售或服务；经销商做。
English: At Tesla, we do our own sales and service. We don't have dealerships. I have made it a principle within Tesla that we should never attempt to make service a profit center. It does not seem right to me when companies make a profit off customers when their product breaks. The best way to experience service is, of course, to not need service.
中文： 在特斯拉，我们自己做销售和服务。我们没有经销商。我在特斯拉内部制定了一个原则，我们永远不应该试图让服务成为利润中心。当公司的产品坏了时从客户身上赚钱，这对我来说似乎不对。体验服务的最佳方式当然是不需要服务。
English: If we charge for something, it is not because we want to make things more expensive; it's because we can't figure out how to make it less expensive.
中文： 如果我们对某事收费，不是因为我们想让事情更贵；而是因为我们无法找出如何让它更便宜。
English: There's a lot of vertical integration at Tesla. We make the battery pack, the power electronics, and the drivetrain ourselves. We're vertically integrated because the pace we needed to move was much faster than the supply chain could move. To the degree you rely on the legacy supply chain, you inherit the legacy constraints—including their speed, costs, and technology.
中文： 特斯拉有很多垂直整合。我们自己制造电池组、电力电子和动力总成。我们是垂直整合的，因为我们需要移动的速度比供应链可以移动的速度快得多。在你依赖传统供应链的程度上，你继承了传统限制——包括它们的速度、成本和技术。
English: We do car insurance now, too. Car insurance is a bigger deal than it may seem. A lot of people are paying 30–40 percent as much as their car lease payment for insurance. The car insurance industry is incredibly inefficient because they've got all these middlemen, from the insurance agent all the way to the final reinsurer. There are a half dozen companies each taking a cut.
中文： 我们现在也做汽车保险。汽车保险比它看起来更重要。很多人支付的保险费是他们汽车租赁付款的 30-40%。汽车保险行业效率极低，因为他们有所有这些中间人，从保险代理人到最终再保险人。有半打公司各分一杯羹。
English: Insurance is driven by statistics, so even if you're a good driver at twenty years old, it's extremely expensive. Tesla allows for real-time insurance based on how you actually drive the car. If you drive the car in a safer way, you pay lower insurance. Our insurance is based on how you drive, not how people who fit your demographic have driven historically.
中文： 保险由统计数据驱动，所以即使你在二十岁时是个好司机，它也非常昂贵。特斯拉允许根据你实际驾驶汽车的方式进行实时保险。如果你以更安全的方 式驾驶汽车，你支付更低的保险费。我们的保险基于你如何驾驶，而不是历史上符合你人口统计数据的人如何驾驶。
English: Tesla is as much a software company as a hardware company. The software in a Tesla operates the car, the screen, the charging…all developed by us. Then, Tesla built an autopilot AI team from scratch, the best real-world AI team on Earth. We also built a chip team too, because the hardware we could buy wasn't capable of running our AI software.
中文： 特斯拉既是一家软件公司也是一家硬件公司。特斯拉中的软件操作汽车、屏幕、充电……都由我们开发。然后，特斯拉从零开始建立了一个自动驾驶 AI 团队，地球上最好的现实世界 AI 团队。我们还建立了一个芯片团队，因为我们可以购买的硬件无法运行我们的 AI 软件。
English: Q: How important is the look and design of the cars?
中文： 问：汽车的外观和设计有多重要？
English: The value of beauty and inspiration is underrated, no question.
中文： 美丽和灵感的价值被低估了，毫无疑问。
English: If you want to make something beautiful, you must trigger whatever fundamental aesthetic algorithms there are. Our brains have some intrinsic elements that represent beauty, which trigger the emotion of appreciation of beauty in our mind.
中文： 如果你想制造一些美丽的东西，你必须触发任何基本的美学算法。我们的大脑有一些代表美丽的内在元素，这些元素触发我们心中对美的欣赏情感。
English: I think these are relatively consistent among people. Not completely. Not everyone likes exactly the same thing, but there's a lot of commonality. It is important to combine aesthetic design with functionality.
中文： 我认为这些在人们中相对一致。不完全。不是每个人都喜欢完全相同的东西，但有很多共性。将美学设计与功能性结合起来很重要。
English: What was hard about the Model S and Model X was to combine aesthetics and utility, to balance the two. You can make a car look good by giving it certain proportions—making it low and slim. But if you do that, the utility is significantly affected. The big challenge is trying to figure out how to get five adults plus two kids in a seven-seater with high utility and keep it looking good. To make a sports car look good is relatively easy. But to make a sedan or an SUV look good is quite difficult.
中文： Model S 和 Model X 的困难之处是结合美学和实用性，平衡两者。你可以通过给它某些比例——让它低而瘦——让汽车看起来不错。但如果你这样做，实用性会受到显著影响。最大的挑战是试图找出如何在七座车中容纳五个成人加两个孩子，具有高实用性，并保持它看起来不错。让跑车看起来不错相对容易。但让轿车或 SUV 看起来不错相当困难。
English: Another incredibly important design principle is to have it feel bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. That's also a hard thing to do.
中文： 另一个极其重要的设计原则是让内部感觉比外部看起来更大。那也是一件困难的事情。
English: Most people don't consciously notice the small details, but they do subconsciously. Your mind takes in an overall impression. You know if something is appealing or not, even though you may not be able to point out exactly why. That sense is a summation of many details. Most of us experience this as "that's ugly," or "that's beautiful," or "wow, that's elegant," but can't break down why.
中文： 大多数人不会 consciously 注意到小细节，但他们确实下意识地注意到。你的大脑接收一个整体印象。你知道某事是否有吸引力，即使你可能无法准确指出为什么。那种感觉是许多细节的总和。我们大多数人将其体验为"那很丑，"或"那很美，"或"哇，那很优雅，"但无法分解为什么。
English: You can train yourself. You can make yourself pay attention to "why." You can learn to bring subconscious awareness into conscious awareness. Look closely and carefully. Look at each object's geometry.
中文： 你可以训练自己。你可以让自己注意"为什么。"你可以学习将潜意识意识带入显意识。仔细仔细地看。看每个物体的几何形状。
English: Pay attention to the little details. Train yourself to notice them. Notice the nuances of design, shape, form, function, and the way it looks in different lights. Anyone can do this, although it is a double-edged sword, because then you always notice all the little things. Now when something's off—even a little thing—it drives me bananas.
中文： 注意小细节。训练自己注意到它们。注意设计、形状、形式、功能的细微差别，以及它在不同光线下的外观。任何人都可以做到这一点，尽管这是一把双刃剑，因为那样你总是注意到所有小事情。现在当某些事情不对劲时——即使是一件小事——它也会让我发疯。
English: If you're trying to make a perfect product, attention to detail is essential.
中文： 如果你试图制造一个完美的产品，注意细节是必不可少的。
Give People More for Less
以更少的钱给人们更多
English: Revolutionizing industries is not for the faint of heart.
中文： 革命化行业不适合胆小的人。
English: Q: How do you think about iterating through products to reach a mass market?
中文： 问：你如何通过产品迭代达到大众市场？
English: The nature of new technology adoption tends to follow an S-curve. People underpredict it in the beginning, because they tend to extrapolate trends in a straight line. Then they'll overpredict it at the midpoint during massive growth. It will take longer than people think at the midpoint, but much shorter than people think at the beginning.
中文： 新技术采用的性质往往遵循 S 曲线。人们在开始时低估它，因为他们倾向于以直线推断趋势。然后他们会在大规模增长的中点高估它。在中点花费的时间比人们想象的要长，但在开始时比人们想象的要短得多。
English: One way to look at technology is like rendering an image in successive levels of detail. The first layer of the image is very blurry and things are out of place. Then with the next pass, it gets a bit more defined and things start to shift into place. And you do another pass and another pass, and eventually it's refined and actually works. It generally takes three major iterations of any major new technology to have it work really, really well.
中文： 看待技术的一种方式就像以连续的细节层次渲染图像。图像的第一层非常模糊，东西错位。然后在下一遍，它变得更加清晰，东西开始到位。然后你再做一遍又一遍，最终它被完善并实际工作。任何重大新技术通常需要三次重大迭代才能使其真正、真正地工作。
English: Progress comes from design and technology improvements as well as scale. Look at the earliest cell phones. In the original Wall Street movie in 1987, the guy's walking down the beach with a giant phone, carrying a briefcase to power it. It had like thirty minutes of battery life. Without technology improvements, no amount of money or scale could have made that phone affordable. It took a lot of engineering and design iterations.
中文： 进步来自设计和技术改进以及规模。看看最早的手机。在 1987 年的原版《华尔街》电影中，那个家伙带着一个巨大的手机走在海滩上，带着一个公文包为它供电。它只有大约三十分钟的电池寿命。没有技术进步，再多的钱或规模都无法让那部手机负担得起。它需要很多工程和设计迭代。
English: In the early days of cell phones, laptops, and gasoline cars, they were considered toys for rich people. You need to go through this phase of having an expensive car available to few in order to build the low-cost car available to many. The first version is simply about making the new technology work. Then, you work to optimize.
中文： 在手机、笔记本电脑和汽油车的早期，它们被认为是富人的玩具。你需要经历这个阶段，让少数人可以使用昂贵的汽车，以便建造许多人可以使用的低成本汽车。第一个版本只是关于让新技术工作。然后，你努力优化。
English: We're probably on the thirtieth version of a cell phone, and with each successive design iteration we add more capability. We integrate more parts and figure out better ways to produce it so it gets both better and cheaper. Progress in any new technology takes multiple versions and a large production volume to make it affordable.
中文： 我们可能在手机的第三十个版本上，每个连续的设计迭代我们增加更多功能。我们集成更多部件，找出更好的生产方法，这样它变得更好更便宜。任何新技术的进步需要多个版本和大量生产量才能使其负担得起。
English: Air travel used to be accessible to only a few people. It was insanely expensive and dangerous. Now it is common to fly. The first TVs were rare and expensive. Then big, flat-screen plasma TVs used to be extremely expensive. Now, you can buy an amazing flat-screen plasma for two hundred bucks. It's amazing.
中文： 航空旅行过去只有少数人可以使用。它非常昂贵和危险。现在飞行很常见。第一批电视很稀有且昂贵。然后大的平板等离子电视曾经非常昂贵。现在，你可以花 200 美元买一个惊人的平板等离子。这很惊人。
English: This is also true for electric cars. The strategy for Tesla was to enter at the high end of the market with the Roadster, where customers are prepared to pay a premium. Then move as fast as possible to higher volume and lower prices with each successive model.
中文： 这也适用于电动汽车。特斯拉的策略是以 Roadster 进入市场高端，那里的客户准备支付溢价。然后随着每个后续车型尽可能快地转向更高产量和更低价格。
English: The Model S was a sporty four-door family car at roughly half the price point of the Roadster. Then the Model 3 was even more affordable. All free cash flow was plowed back into R&D to drive down costs and bring the next products to market as fast as possible. When someone bought the Tesla Roadster, they were helping pay for development of the low-cost family car.
中文： Model S 是一款运动型四门家庭轿车，价格约为 Roadster 的一半。然后 Model 3 更负担得起。所有自由现金流都投入研发以降低成本，并尽快将下一代产品推向市场。当有人购买特斯拉 Roadster 时，他们在帮助支付低成本家庭轿车的开发费用。
English: Q: Any other unique aspects about Tesla's product philosophy?
中文： 问：关于特斯拉的产品哲学还有其他独特方面吗？
English: Focus on signal over noise. A lot of companies get confused. They spend a lot of money on things that don't actually make the product better. At Tesla, we put all the money into research and development, manufacturing, and design to try and make the cars as good as possible. For any company, ask, "Are the efforts we're expending resulting in a better product or service?" If they're not, stop those efforts.
中文： 专注于信号而非噪音。很多公司感到困惑。他们花很多钱在实际上不能让产品更好的事情上。在特斯拉，我们把所有钱都投入研发、制造和设计，试图让汽车尽可能好。对于任何公司，问，"我们付出的努力是否导致更好的产品或服务？"如果不是，停止那些努力。
English: Also, go for extreme levels of precision. One of the examples we use at Tesla is LEGO blocks. LEGO is super precise. The press-fit comes down to a quarter millimeter or less, and each one is exactly the same. LEGO doesn't work if the press-fit is too soft or too hard. If it's too soft, the press-and-click won't stick; if it's too hard, you can't get it on. They can make something that is a tiny fraction of a millimeter accurate and it's a low-cost plastic toy. If LEGO can be that precise, so can a car.
中文： 此外，追求极端的精度水平。我们在特斯拉使用的一个例子是乐高积木。乐高超级精确。压配合精度达到四分之一毫米或更少，每个都完全相同。如果压配合太软或太硬，乐高就不起作用。如果太软，压合不会粘住；如果太硬，你无法安装。他们可以制造出精度为毫米的微小分数的东西，它是一个低成本塑料玩具。如果乐高可以那么精确，汽车也可以。
The Battle of Public Perception
公众认知的战斗
English: It should puzzle you that a Tesla crash resulting in a broken ankle is front-page news, yet the many thousands of people who die in US auto accidents each year get almost no coverage.
中文： 这应该让你困惑，特斯拉撞车导致脚踝骨折是头版新闻，然而每年在美国汽车事故中死亡的数千人几乎没有报道。
English: Q: How do you stay positive when faced with public attacks and misrepresentation, without becoming resentful or cynical?
中文： 问：当你面临公众攻击和歪曲时，如何保持积极，而不变得怨恨或愤世嫉俗？
English: It does get me down at times. It makes me sad. But at some point you realize these attacks are by people who don't know you and their goal is to generate clicks. If you can detach yourself emotionally (which is not easy) and say, "This person does not know me. They're just writing to get clicks" then it doesn't hurt as much.
中文： 有时这确实让我沮丧。它让我伤心。但在某个时候你意识到这些攻击来自不了解你的人，他们的目标是产生点击量。如果你能在情感上超脱自己（这不容易）并说，"这个人不了解我。他们只是为了获得点击量而写作"那么它就不会那么伤人。
English: It also helps to stay focused on our mission. Tesla's motivation remains to make electric transport as affordable as possible. That informs all our actions.
中文： 保持专注于我们的使命也有帮助。特斯拉的动机仍然是让电动交通尽可能负担得起。这指导我们所有的行动。
English: We put all our money and effort into trying to make the product as compelling as possible. The way to sell any product is through word of mouth. The key is to have a product people love. People will talk about the things they love.
中文： 我们把所有钱和精力都投入试图让产品尽可能有吸引力。销售任何产品的方式是通过口碑。关键是拥有一个人们喜爱的产品。人们会谈论他们喜爱的东西。
English: That generates real word of mouth, and that's how our sales have grown. We're not spending money on advertising, public relations, or endorsements. Anyone who buys our car bought it because they like the car, not their impression of the car.
中文： 这产生了真正的口碑，这就是我们的销售增长的方式。我们不花钱在广告、公共关系或代言上。任何购买我们汽车的人购买它是因为他们喜欢这辆车，而不是他们对这辆车的印象。
English: Tesla does not advertise or pay for endorsements. Instead, we use that money to make the product great.
中文： 特斯拉不做广告或支付代言费。相反，我们用那笔钱让产品变得伟大。
English: There are over a million internal combustion engine car fires per year resulting in thousands of deaths, but one Tesla car fire with no injuries gets the biggest headlines. Why the double standard?
中文： 每年有超过一百万起内燃机汽车火灾，导致数千人死亡，但一起没有受伤的特斯拉汽车火灾却获得最大的头条新闻。为什么双重标准？
English: The problem is journalists are under constant pressure to get maximum clicks. They either earn advertising dollars or get fired. It's a tricky situation, since Tesla doesn't advertise and fossil fuel companies and legacy car companies are among the world's biggest advertisers.
中文： 问题是记者一直处于获得最大点击量的压力下。他们要么赚取广告费，要么被解雇。这是一个棘手的情况，因为特斯拉不做广告，而化石燃料公司和传统汽车公司是世界上最大的广告商之一。
English: Regulators tend to pay a disproportionate amount of attention to whatever is in the press. This is an objective fact. And Tesla generates a lot of press. In the United States, there are about forty thousand automotive deaths per year. But if there are four in a Tesla, they'll probably receive a thousand times more press than any other incident.
中文： 监管机构倾向于对媒体上的任何事情给予不成比例的关注。这是一个客观事实。特斯拉产生大量媒体报道。在美国，每年约有四万起汽车死亡事故。但如果有四起发生在特斯拉，它们可能会获得比其他任何事故多一千倍的媒体报道。
English: The reality is a Tesla, like most electric cars, is over 500 percent
中文： 现实是特斯拉，像大多数电动汽车一样，超过 500%