在共享出行这件事上，汽车制造商准备从硅谷手中抢回位置 | 双语阅读

神译局·2017年06月12日 21:01

宝马和戴姆勒是其中两个野心最大的汽车制造商，他们想阻止硅谷独吞所有的好处。

编者按：谈到共享出行，我们现在首先想到的不是汽车大佬宝马或者戴勒姆，而是硅谷的Uber、谷歌这些科技公司。不过，汽车制造商们有意改变这个现状，凭借自己雄厚的技术积淀来赶超硅谷的科技公司。《纽约时报》近日发表了题为“Automakers Race to Get Ahead of Silicon Valley on Car-Sharing”的文章，以下是原文和译文，敬请大家阅读。

SEATTLE — On a recent overcast afternoon in this city’s Belltown neighborhood, a driver pulled up in a gleaming new BMW X1 sport utility vehicle just a few minutes after a few swipes of a smartphone app had summoned it.

西雅图的一个阴天下午，在这个城市的Belltown附近，某个乘客通过智能手机APP发出订单后几分钟，一名司机驾着一辆闪亮的新款宝马X1运动型多用途车赶了过来。

This was not a car dispatched by Uber or Lyft, the two tech companies that are the Coke and Pepsi of ride-sharing services. Instead, the vehicle belonged to the company that made it, BMW Group, through a service it owns called ReachNow.

这不是通过Uber或Lyft预约的汽车，这两家科技公司在共享出行界的地位就像可乐里的百事和可口。取而代之的是，该车辆属于它的制造商宝马集团旗下的ReachNow服务。

The ride-sharing service represents the latest effort by a car manufacturer to get a grip on the technological trends that could disrupt their businesses by making vehicle ownership — and eventually even drivers — unnecessary. BMW and Daimler, maker of Mercedes-Benz, are two of the most aggressive carmakers building their own “mobility services” to prevent Silicon Valley’s upstarts from keeping all the spoils themselves.

这项共享出行服务代表了汽车制造商最新的努力成果。共享出行的潮流使得拥有汽车（甚至司机）逐渐变得不再必要，从而危及汽车制造商的切实利益，因此，汽车制造商们希望通过这样的努力来遏制这一趋势的发展。宝马和梅赛德斯奔驰的制造商戴姆勒是其中两个野心最大的汽车制造商，他们想建立起自己的“移动服务”，以防止硅谷的科技新秀独吞所有的好处。

For both, a major focus has been building short-term rental services; customers drive themselves. On Thursday, ReachNow branched out to ride-sharing (in which drivers pick up passengers) by expanding a small private test of the service in Seattle to all of the service’s members in the city.

对于这二者来说，他们的重点是建立短期租赁服务，客户可以自驾。在星期四，ReachNow在西雅图将一个小型的私人测试扩大到整个西雅图城市范围，再向共享搭车领域（司机接乘客的方式）进军。

Both Daimler and BMW said their current mobility services were helping them with know-how, including valuable data about customer patterns, to prepare them for a future when their cars drive themselves. When a customer can hail a fully autonomous vehicle through an app (which could take a decade or two), they say the distinction between the two mobility services will go away.

戴姆勒和宝马都表示，他们目前的移动服务还处在帮助他们了解业务的阶段，包括有关客户模式的有价值的数据，为未来的自动驾驶汽车做准备。当一个客户可以通过应用程序打到一辆完全自动的车辆时（可能需要十到二十年时间），他们说这时两种移动服务之间的区别将会消失。

“When you have autonomous driving, car-sharing and ride-sharing will become absolutely the same,” said Bernhard Blittel, vice president for BMW i Mobility Services, which includes its ReachNow service.

宝马i移动服务部，正是ReachNow所在的部门，副总裁Bernhard Blittel表示：“当你掌握自动驾驶技术时，共享汽车和共享搭车将变成完全一回事。”

Daimler beat its luxury auto rival to the car-sharing market in 2008 with its Car2Go service in Germany. Now it has more than 2.4 million members in 26 cities across nine countries, with more than 800,000 members in North America. While it started with two-seater vehicles from Daimler’s Smart division, the service now lets customers rent the company’s more luxurious Mercedes GLA and CLA models.

戴姆勒在2008年通过其在德国的Car2Go服务将它的豪华汽车竞争对手推向汽车共享市场。现在，该服务在九个国家26个城市拥有240多万名成员，北美地区有超过80万的会员。虽然这项服务最先是从戴姆勒智能部门的双座车开始的，现在客户已经可以租用公司更豪华的奔驰GLA和CLA车型了。

Car2Go is a twist on traditional car-rental services: It allows members to hop into vehicles for a quick trip to a grocery store or a concert; they pay for use of the car by the minute (hourly and daily rates are available, too).

Car2Go和传统租车服务略微不同：它允许会员在前往杂货店或音乐会的途中快速搭乘，费用以分钟计（也可以按小时和天收费）。

What’s more convenient is that customers can return the cars by parking them on the streets; a Car2Go smartphone app locates the cars for pickup. The company has parking arrangements with cities so customers don’t have to feed meters.

更方便的是，客户可以直接将车停放在街上来归还车辆； Car2Go智能手机里的应用程序可以对汽车定位。公司与城市有停车协议，所以客户不必耗费多余的里程。

BMW began its first car-sharing service, DriveNow, in Europe in 2011 in a joint venture with the rental car company Sixt; it now has about 875,000 members for the service. Last year it established ReachNow, its North American car-sharing service, as a wholly owned subsidiary based in Seattle. Now about 50,000 members in that city; Portland, Ore.; and Brooklyn can rent various models from BMW’s Mini brand, along with other BMW models.

宝马在2011年与欧洲租车公司Sixt合资在欧洲开始了它的首个汽车共享服务DriveNow，现在拥有约87.5万名服务人员。去年，它成立了位于西雅图的全资子公司ReachNow，在北美提供汽车共享服务。现在ReachNow在西雅图约有5万名会员，在俄勒冈州的波特兰和布鲁克林，会员可以租用宝马Mini以及其他车型。

Last year, General Motors formed a car-sharing service called Maven after the company acquired the assets of the start-up Sidecar. Earlier this year, GM introduced a related service, Maven Gig, that lets drivers for Lyft, Uber and ride-sharing services rent Chevy Bolts.

去年，通用汽车公司收购了创业公司Sidecar后，成立了名为Maven的汽车共享服务。今年早些时候，通用汽车公司推出了一项相关服务，Maven Gig，可以让让Lyft、Uber和共享搭车司机租用雪佛兰。

Including Daimler, BMW and services from other companies, there were over 1.9 million car-sharing members in North America, more than double the number five years ago, according to estimates by Susan Shaheen and Adam Cohen, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校研究人员Susan Shaheen和Adam Cohen的估计，包括戴姆勒、宝马和其他公司的服务在内，北美共有超过190万名共享汽车会员，是五年前的两倍多。

Last year, U.C. Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center, which Ms. Shaheen co-directs, published results of a three-year study of nearly 10,000 Car2Go members in five North American cities. It found that the car-sharing service reduced private vehicle ownership and miles traveled in cars in those cities; this, in turn, reduced greenhouse gas emissions. From 2 to 5 percent of the Car2Go members sold a vehicle, and an additional 7 to 10 percent did not acquire one because of the service.

去年，也是在Shaheen女士的指导下，美国伯克利的交通可持续发展研究中心发表了在五个北美城市三年以来的Car2Go会员研究报告。报告发现，汽车共享服务减少了这些城市的私家车拥有量和行驶里程，作为结果，减少了温室气体排放。2％至5％的Car2Go会员选择出售车辆，另外7％至10％的人因为该服务选择不买车。

While their core businesses remain making and selling vehicles, car manufacturers are feverishly experimenting with new services that get people using their products in an age when car ownership is no longer as appealing as it once was.

虽然核心业务仍然是制造和销售车辆，但汽车制造商们正在狂热地尝试吸引人们使用他们的产品的新服务，因为在如今，汽车所有权已经不像以前那样吸引人。

“If they stay away from those trends and don’t insert themselves into this evolving ecosystem of mobility services, there’s a risk they get left behind,” Ms. Shaheen said.

Shaheen女士说：“如果他们对这种趋势敬而远之，拒绝把自己置于不断变化的移动服务生态系统中，他们就要面临落后的风险。

While manufacturers are starting their car-sharing services long in advance of the availability of fully autonomous vehicles, much of what they are doing today is a prelude to such vehicles’ arrival. “We gain valuable experience and knowledge when it comes to aspects that will be relevant in a robotic vehicle scenario,” said Joerg Lamparter, head of Daimler Mobility Services.

虽然制造商们在能够提供自动驾驶汽车很久之前就开始了汽车共享服务，但今天他们所做的很多工作都是在为这种车辆的出现做铺垫。戴姆勒移动服务部门负责人Joerg Lamparter表示：“在关于机器人车辆的设想方面，我们获得了许多宝贵的经验和知识。”

That includes knowing how to operate a fleet of vehicles in a city, keeping them clean and running smoothly and ensuring that the cars are fueled or charged up. Data helps them understand how to rebalance the location of vehicles to meet anticipated demand from customers.

这包括了解如何在一个城市运营车队，要保持车辆清洁，运行平稳，确保燃油或电量充足。数据帮助他们了解如何重新平衡车辆的位置，以满足客户的预期需求。

Today, the car-sharing services have to send an employee out to move vehicles to more optimal pickup locations. In the future, the cars will do that themselves. But a thicket of technological, safety and policy issues will have to be ironed out first.

今天，汽车共享服务必须派遣一名员工将车辆开到最优的出发点。在未来，汽车将自己完成这个过程。但在技术、安全和政策方面的问题必须首先得到解决。

BMW has announced it is working with Intel to start production of self-driving cars by 2021. Daimler has announced a partnership to bring self-driving cars to Uber’s service.

宝马宣布正在与英特尔合作，在2021年前开始生产自动驾驶汽车。戴姆勒则宣布了与Uber推进自驾车的合作。

While ReachNow’s new ride-sharing service in Seattle may seem like a detour from its start in car-sharing, it’s just another way for BMW to get more use from the growing number of cars it is putting on roads in the city.

虽然ReachNow在西雅图的新共享搭车服务看起来像是迂回的汽车共享，这其实是宝马将自己在城市中投放的车辆加以利用的另一种方式。

Since December, ReachNow has been privately testing its service, with about 2,000 members. It has about 80 drivers, who work for an independent company. For now, ReachNow will only pick up ride-sharing customers in the central areas of the city, though they will take customers to any neighborhood and the airport.

自12月以来，ReachNow已经在私下里对其服务进行测试，当时约有2000名成员。项目有大约80名司机，他们为另一家独立公司工作。现在，ReachNow将只会在城市中心地区接受客户的搭乘，尽管他们会把客户带到任何社区和机场。

Steve Banfield, the chief executive of ReachNow, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters that the company was seeking to give people a variety of options for getting around a city. “Sometimes they want to be driven,” he said. “Sometimes they want to drive. Sometimes they want to take a car for several days, sometimes for 10 minutes.”

ReachNow首席执行官Steve Banfield在在公司总部的采访中表示，ReachNow正在努力为人们提供城市出行的多样化选择。他说：“有时他们想有司机，有时他们想自己开。有时候他们想要租几天车，有时候10分钟就够了。”

“By creating a set of services that blend these use cases, it enables us to learn how people want to move in and around a city,” Mr. Banfield said. “It really gets us a lot closer to the consumer in terms of their mobility needs going forward.”

“通过创建一组混合使用场景的服务，我们可以了解人们在城市内外的出行方式。”Banfield先生说，“这真的让我们在消费者未来的移动性需求方面更进一步。”