I.H.135.Warren Buffett.Autonomous driving
自动驾驶很可能让汽车变得更没有差异性。
1、《2024-05-04 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
Becky Quick: This question’s for Warren and Ajit. It’s from Jeff Oyster. As a Berkshire and Tesla shareholder, I would like to hear your thoughts on the potential financial effects to GEICO, assuming Elon Musk delivers on his fully autonomous driving goal. On Tesla’s most recent earnings call, Elon said, if you’ve got, at scale, a statistically significant amount of data that shows conclusively that the autonomous car has, let’s say, half the accident rate of a human driven car, I think that’s difficult to ignore. Assuming Elon succeeds in reducing accidents by 50% versus human drivers, wouldn’t auto insurance rates fall to reflect the reduced underwriting risks, thereby adversely impacting GEICO’s revenues and float and perhaps margins, too?
贝基-奎克：这个问题是问沃伦和阿吉特的。来自杰夫-奥斯特（Jeff Oyster）。作为伯克希尔公司和特斯拉公司的股东，我想听听你们对假设埃隆-马斯克实现完全自动驾驶目标可能对 GEICO 造成的财务影响的看法。在特斯拉最近的财报电话会议上，埃隆说，如果你有统计意义上的大量数据，确凿地表明自动驾驶汽车的事故率，比方说，只有人类驾驶汽车的一半，我认为这是难以忽视的。假设伊隆成功地将事故率降低了 50%，那么汽车保险费率不就会下降，以反映承保风险的降低，从而对 GEICO 的收入和浮存金产生不利影响吗？
Warren Buffett: Well, yeah. Well, let’s just take the extreme example. Let’s say there are only going to be three accidents in the United States next year for some crazy reason that anything that reduces accidents is going to reduce costs. But that’s been harder to do than people have done before. But obviously. But if it really happens, the figures will show it, and our data will show it, and the prices will come down. There have been a lot of people talk about doing that in the past.
沃伦-巴菲特嗯，是的。那我们就举一个极端的例子。假设明年美国只发生三起交通事故，出于某种疯狂的原因，只要能减少事故，就能降低成本。但这比人们以前做的要难得多。但很明显但如果真的发生了，数据就会显示出来，我们的数据也会显示出来，价格就会下降。过去有很多人说要这样做。
I mean, General Motors used to be very big in the insurance business, and when Uber first started, they used some firm, which now is, I think Ajit will confirm they’re close to bankruptcy now, aren’t they? Because of taking things on at the wrong prices. Is that true?
我的意思是，通用汽车公司曾经在保险业务方面做得很大，Uber 刚起步的时候，他们也使用了一些公司，现在，我想 Ajit 会证实，他们已经接近破产了，不是吗？因为以错误的价格承接了一些业务。是真的吗？
Ajit: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. 阿吉特Yep.Yeah.Yeah.
Warren Buffett: Insurance always looks easier than it is, and it’s so much fun because you get the money at the start, you know, and then you find out whether you’ve done something stupid later on. But it’s a very tempting business when somebody hands you money and you hand them a little piece of paper. But really knowing whether you’re - I mean, if accidents get reduced 50%, it’s going to be good for society and it’s going to be bad for insurance companies’ volume. But, you know, but for society is what we’re looking for so far.
沃伦-巴菲特：保险看起来总是比实际容易，而且非常有趣，因为你一开始就能拿到钱，你知道，后来你就会发现自己是否做了蠢事。但是，当有人把钱交给你，你把一张小纸片交给他们时，这是一个非常诱人的生意。但真正要知道你是否--我的意思是，如果事故减少 50%，对社会是好事，对保险公司的业务量也是坏事。但是，你知道，对社会有利才是我们目前所追求的。
You might find it kind of interesting. I mean, the number of people killed per 100 million passenger miles driven. I think it actually, when I was young, it was like 15, but even post world war two, it only fell like seven or thereabouts and Ralph Nader probably has done more for the american consumer than just about anybody in history because that seven or six has now come down to under two. And I don’t think it would have come down that way without him. There have been some kind of fluke figures of what people did during the pandemic, which are quite interesting because they, they didn’t drive immediately, they didn’t drive as many miles, but they drove more dangerously, didn’t they? Is that right, Ajit?
您可能会觉得这很有趣。我是说，每10亿乘客行驶里程的死亡人数。我认为实际上，当我年轻的时候，这个数字是15，但即使在二战后，这个数字也只下降到了大约7。拉尔夫·纳德可能为美国消费者做得比历史上任何人都多，因为那个7或6现在已经降到了不到2。如果没有他，我认为这个数字不会这样下降。在疫情期间，人们的行为有一些偶然的数据，这非常有趣，因为他们没有立即开车，他们没有行驶那么多里程，但他们开车更加危险，对吗，Ajit？
Ajit Jain: Yeah. Yeah. So the point I want to make in terms of Tesla and the fact that they feel that because of their technology, the number of accidents do come down, and that is certainly provable. But I think what needs to be factored in as well is the repair cost of each one of these accidents has skyrocketed. So if you multiply the number of accidents times the cost of each accident, I’m not sure that total number has come down as much as Tesla would like us to believe. Tesla has been toying with the idea of writing insurance directly or indirectly. And so far it hasn’t really sort of been much of a success. Time will tell. But I think, you know, automation just shifts a lot of the expense from the operator to the equipment provider.
Ajit Jain: 是的。是的。我想表达的关于特斯拉的观点是，他们认为由于他们的技术，事故数量确实减少了，这当然是可以证明的。但我认为也需要考虑的是，每一起事故的修理成本已经飙升。所以如果你将事故数量乘以每起事故的成本，我不确定那个总数是否像特斯拉希望我们相信的那样下降了很多。特斯拉一直在尝试直接或间接地撰写保险。到目前为止，这并没有真正取得太大成功。时间会告诉我们答案。但我认为，自动化只是将很多费用从操作者转移到了设备提供商那里。
一直是这个看法，值得怀疑的看法。
- 2024年2月，马斯克和特斯拉的高管开会，讨论难产多年的Model 2到底还要不要上市，Model 2是特斯拉继续下沉产品线的计划车型，售价低到2.5万美金，公司内部原本对它寄予厚望，认为可以极大的提升整体销量，但马斯克对Model 2持反对意见，他更希望推出无人驾驶的电动巡游车队Robotaxi，并相信Robotaxi可以比Model 2更早突破百万级年销量的目标；
越卖越便宜，一条死路。
- 高管们给马斯克提供了一份分析报告，假设Robotaxi顺利铺开，让共享出行变得普及起来，那么相对应的，美国汽车市场的规模将缩减1/5，因为无人驾驶的巡游车在使用时间上会是大部分时间放在停车场的私家车的5倍，然后扣除掉不会转向Robotaxi的「顽固」车主，结论是年销量很难达到100万，「放弃个人汽车的顾客没那么多」；
又是一条死路。
- 而且还要考虑到Robotaxi也会对特斯拉自己的汽车业务造成冲击，这些新增的收入远远无法替代特斯拉在美国每年卖掉的那60多万辆车，而且特斯拉有2/3的营业额来自海外市场，但像Robotaxi这种和服务市场高度绑定的产品，很有可能在很长一段时间里只能在美国本土售卖，其他国家因为担心受到冲击不会轻易批准让你进去；
- 副总裁Rohan Patel告诉马斯克，所有的预测模型都显示，FSD和Robotaxi的回报周期会非常长，尤其是在美国市场之外，但马斯克反对这种纸上谈兵的理论依据，表示「模型根本不懂Robotaxi代表的未来将有多么辉煌」；
- 高管们几乎是以恳求的口气，希望马斯克至少妥协到允许Robotaxi和Model 2同时推进的地步，两款车型甚至都能共用生产线，Model 2也能帮助Robotaxi这个不确定性更高的业务分摊风险，但马斯克还是不愿接受，他提议给Model Y减配实现降价，但团队告诉他已经没有太多功能可砍了；
- 随着争论的火药味渐浓，马斯克的助手半开玩笑的说「你们是不是要搞叛变」，最后马斯克拍板决定停掉Model 2项目，特斯拉以后将成为一家人工智能的领先公司，亲历整场事件员工认为，马斯克对于制造一辆类似大众高尔夫的经济型小车没有任何兴趣，他的态度是，「让别人去做吧」；
- 会议结束后的两个月内，支持Model 2项目的2名副总裁和1名总监辞职走人，而剩下的人开始理解马斯克的转变——Model 2的立项当初就是马斯克主导的——马斯克觉得自己推动汽车行业降低对于化石燃料的依赖这个主要目标已经完成了，剩下的工作变得平庸而乏味，比如一代代的更新车型、和华尔街开会之类，而马斯克的心态则变成了「我能做的下一个大事是什么」；
- 特斯拉去年交付的汽车数量首次同比下降，而马斯克对电动汽车的兴趣下降则始于2023年——和他收购推特的时间「恰好」重合——马斯克分配特斯拉的时间急剧减少，但他同时拒绝引入联席CEO之类的人来分担权力，加上后来对于政治事物的投入热情，特斯拉更加频繁的陷入无人看管的状态；
- 马斯克原本也不看好Model Y，认为不会卖得很好，他希望Model Y能够直接开发成一款为自动驾驶场景而生的产品，但在下属们全都表示FSD根本没有做好准备之后才勉强同意让Model Y投放市场，然而Model Y实现了巨大的销量，连续两年成为全球最畅销的车型，这让特斯拉的团队意识到马斯克的判断并非永远正确；
- 熟悉马斯克想法的人透露，马斯克在经历了Model 3产能不足的那几年后，产生了某种类似创伤后应激障碍的心理，开始对小型车失去热情，觉得这类产品毫无趣味，接着扩大到所有「缺乏独特性」的新车迭代上，除非是像反乌托邦风格的Cybertruck这种异类，否则就很难在汇报上引起他的关注；
- 时值特斯拉鼎盛时期的2020年，马斯克在电话会议上狂热的谈论建设超级工厂、汽车保险、续航立场，充满激情的说「让汽车变得负担得起非常重要，这将决定我们的使命能否成功」，但在4年后，情况看已经完全不同，还是在电话会议上，他说「有一条路将使特斯拉的市值将会超过所有公司，但这条路不在电动汽车这条赛道上，而是自动驾驶和人形机器人，我们将不遗余力的朝那个方向努力」。
Becky Quick: This question comes from Himanshu Bindal for Ajit and Warren. Autonomous vehicles are already driving across roads in American cities with no driver involvement. How do Warren and Ajit think about any disruption risk from these autonomous vehicles to GEICO’s auto insurance business, which is built around understanding and underwriting human drivers? Wouldn’t what we call auto insurance today just become product liability for autonomous vehicles and autonomous software companies?
Becky Quick：这个问题来自 Himanshu Bindal，提给 Ajit 和 Warren。如今在美国城市，autonomous vehicles 已经在无人干预的情况下上路行驶。对于 GEICO 以理解并承保人类驾驶者为基础的汽车保险业务，Warren 和 Ajit 如何看待这些 autonomous vehicles 带来的颠覆性风险？我们今天所说的 auto insurance 是否会转变为针对 autonomous vehicles 和自动驾驶软件公司的 product liability？
Ajit Jain: There’s no question that insurance for automobiles is going to change dramatically once self-driving cars become a reality. The big change will be what you identified. Most of the insurance that is sold and bought revolves around operator errors – how often they happen, how severe they are, and therefore what premium we ought to charge.
Ajit Jain：毫无疑问，一旦 self-driving cars 成为现实，汽车保险将发生剧烈变化。最大的变化正如你指出的那样。大多数出售和购买的保险都围绕着“operator errors”——发生频率、严重程度，以及据此应收取的保费。
To the extent these new self-driving cars are safer and involved in fewer accidents, that insurance will be less required. Instead, it’ll be substituted by product liability. So we at GEICO and elsewhere are certainly trying to get ready for that switch, where we move from providing insurance for operator errors to being more ready to provide protection for product errors and errors and omissions in the construction of these automobiles.
如果这些新的 self-driving cars 更安全、事故更少，那么这类保险的需求就会下降。取而代之的将是 product liability。因此在 GEICO 以及其他地方，我们确实在为这一转变做准备：从为“operator errors”提供保险，转向更好地为产品缺陷以及这些汽车在设计制造中的“errors and omissions”提供保障。
Warren Buffett: We expect change in all our businesses. If I’d settled for being in New England textiles – even though it worked well for 70 years or so prior – the world changes. If the game didn’t change, it really wouldn’t be very interesting. If every time you swung at a baseball you hit a home run, or every time you hit a golf ball you had a hole in one, it wouldn’t be interesting.
Warren Buffett：我们预期所有业务都会发生变化。如果我当年固守 New England 的纺织业——尽管此前七十来年它运转得不错——那也经不起世界的变化。如果这场“游戏”从不改变，反而一点都不有趣。就像你每次挥棒都是全垒打，或每次打高尔夫都是“一杆进洞”，那也没意思。
The fact that there will be things you have to think about all the time as you go along and you’ll make mistakes – that’s really part of the fun. Your brain would turn to mush if you didn’t have a few problems now and then.
一路走来总有需要时刻思考的事情，也会犯错——这其实是乐趣的一部分。如果不时遇不到几个难题，你的大脑都会“糊掉”。
Auto insurance will change, although it’s remarkable how little it has changed in its relatively short history. Who knows what we’ll be doing in transportation 100 years from now? If you go back a couple hundred years ago, who could have predicted the United States would look like what it does and people would move like they do and enjoy themselves like they do?
汽车保险会改变，虽然有趣的是，在其相对短暂的历史中它其实变化不大。谁知道一百年后我们的交通会是什么样？回溯几百年前，谁又能预测今天的 United States 会长成现在这样，人们会以这样的方式出行并享受生活？
It’s a dynamic world. The biggest thing we have to worry about, unfortunately, is that we’ve learned how to destroy the world too. We’ve got this wonderful world, but now we know there are eight countries – and probably a ninth coming – that can destroy it, and we don’t necessarily have the perfect people leading each of those countries.
这是个动态的世界。不幸的是，我们最大的担忧在于，人类也学会了如何毁灭这个世界。我们拥有一个美好的世界，但如今我们知道有八个国家——可能还会有第九个——能够摧毁它，而这些国家并不一定由“完美的人”来领导。
When Einstein came up with E=mc² back in 1905, he didn’t dream that mass could be converted into energy in a way that would change the world. When I was born in 1930, they had known about Einstein’s law of physics for 25 years, but nobody had thought about what it could do to change warfare in the future.
当 Einstein 在 1905 年提出 E=mc² 时，他并未想到质量可以以一种会改变世界的方式转化为能量。到我 1930 年出生时，人们已经知道 Einstein 的这条物理定律 25 年了，但没人想到它会如何改变未来的战争。
Then in August 1939, Roosevelt got the most famous letter in history from Leo Szilard. Szilard couldn’t get his letter in front of Roosevelt because who had heard of Leo Szilard? But he got Einstein to sign it. Roosevelt probably understood about as much about physics as I do, but he understood that Einstein signed it. So he called in General Groves and said, “We should do something about this.” All we did was learn how to destroy the world.
随后在 1939 年 8 月，Roosevelt 收到了 Leo Szilard 发来的历史上最著名的信件。Szilard 自己的信送不到 Roosevelt 桌上——谁听说过 Leo Szilard 呢？但他让 Einstein 签了名。Roosevelt 对物理的理解大概跟我差不多，但他明白“Einstein 签了字”。于是他召见 Groves 将军，说“我们得做点什么”。而我们学到的，却是如何毁灭世界。
We needed to do it – Germany had Heisenberg and he looked like he was ahead of us. We can’t put that genie back in the bottle. The world changes, and we’ve got wonderful things, but we also have a guy in North Korea with nuclear weapons. What does North Korea need nuclear weapons for? Can that be a good thing in the world? But they’re not going to go away.
我们当时必须那样做——Germany 有 Heisenberg，看起来领先我们。这个“精灵”已经放出，装不回去了。世界在变化，我们拥有许多美好事物，但我们也面对 North Korea 拥核的现实。North Korea 需要核武器做什么？这能是世界上的好事吗？但这些东西不会自行消失。
So it’s a world of change. We are enjoying incredible change that’s contributed to everybody in this room living so much better than people were living a couple hundred years ago. But we haven’t changed human beings very much so far. We’ve certainly changed weapons of mass destruction, but we haven’t made much progress with the human race. We’ll see what happens with that.
所以，这是一个充满变化的世界。我们正享受着惊人的变革，使在座每个人的生活远胜几百年前。但到目前为止，人类自身并没有改变太多。我们确实改变了大规模杀伤性武器，却未能在人类本身上取得相称的进步。对此我们拭目以待。
But in the meantime, we’ll see changes in auto insurance and cars, and that will be easier for us to deal with than when we had to deal with the problems of turning out textiles in New England. You deal with the world as it develops, and like I say, everybody here is living in the luckiest period. Enjoy your luck and try to figure out the answers to what’s going to happen. We’ve done pretty well actually adapting to the changes.
但与此同时，我们会看到汽车与汽车保险的改变，而应对这些，比当年在 New England 纺织业所面对的问题要容易。随着世界演进去应对它。正如我所说，在座每个人都生活在最幸运的时代。享受你的好运，并努力思考接下来会发生什么。事实上，我们在适应变化方面做得相当不错。
Ajit Jain: I’d like to add that we talked about the shift to product liability and protection for accidents that take place because of an error in product design or supply. In addition to that shift, I think what we’ll see is a major shift where the number of accidents will drop dramatically because of automatic driving. But on the other hand, the cost per repair every time there’s an accident will go up very significantly because of the amount of technology in the car.
Ajit Jain：我想补充一点，我们刚才谈到了向产品责任的转变，以及对因产品设计或供应错误而导致事故的保障。除了这种转变之外，我认为我们还会看到另一项重大变化：由于自动驾驶，事故数量将显著下降。但另一方面，每次发生事故的单次维修成本将会大幅上升，因为汽车中所包含的技术含量越来越高。
How those two variables interact with each other in terms of the total cost of providing insurance, I think, is still an open issue.
关于这两个变量如何相互作用、从而影响提供保险的总成本，我认为仍是一个悬而未决的问题。
Warren Buffett: I’ll give you two interesting figures to ponder. When I walked into GEICO’s office in 1951, the average price of a policy was around $40 a year. Now it’s easy to get up to $2,000 depending on location and other factors. During that same time, the number of people killed in auto accidents has fallen from roughly six per 100 million miles driven to a little over one.
Warren Buffett：我给你们两个有意思的数据来思考。1951 年我走进 GEICO 办公室时，一份保单的平均价格大约是每年 40 美元。现在根据地区和其他因素，很容易就涨到 2,000 美元。在同一时期，汽车事故中的死亡人数则从每行驶一亿英里大约 6 人，下降到略高于 1 人。
So the car has become incredibly safer, and it costs 50 times as much to buy an insurance policy. When people talk about developments in car driving, it’s a lot easier to look at the Buck Rogers aspect of it, but they don’t actually think about what really happens to the math of the business.
所以汽车变得不可思议地更安全了，但购买一份保险的成本却提高了 50 倍。人们谈到驾驶技术的发展时，更容易被那些“科幻感十足”的方面吸引，而没有真正去思考这门生意背后的数学变化。
The auto insurance industry has been a huge growth industry. Homeowners insurance prices in Nebraska have doubled in the last 10 years, adjusted for general inflation, and convective storms have just gone on a tear. It’s still unprofitable to write homeowners insurance in Nebraska after doubling in the last 10 years.
汽车保险行业一直是一个巨大的增长型产业。内布拉斯加州的房主保险价格在过去 10 年（扣除总体通胀因素后）翻了一番，对流风暴频发、破坏性更强。即使在过去 10 年翻倍之后，在内布拉斯加州承保房主保险仍然是不赚钱的。
So it’s very hard to predict what these big changes mean. You just have to keep thinking all the time. But you don’t want to read some research report that says the world’s coming to an end or the world’s going to be wonderful because of this or that – there are about 50 other developments going on at the same time that you need to think about and keep observing as you go along.
因此，很难准确预测这些重大变化意味着什么。你只能不停地思考。但你不该去看那些研究报告——要么说世界末日将至，要么说世界将因某个因素变得美好——因为同时还在发生着大约 50 种其他演变，你需要在行进中持续思考与观察。
You never reach a final answer in this business – you reach a point of action that you take. We try to get into high probability things and play the game in the same way. But it will be different than you think, and you should wake up every morning and think about that if you’re in the business of managing businesses.
在这门生意里，你永远得不到最终答案——你只能到达一个“采取行动的节点”。我们努力只参与胜率高的事情，并始终以同样的方式参与这场游戏。但结果会与想象不同，如果你的事业是经营企业，你应该每天早晨醒来就想到这一点。
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