标签: future

早在今年3月份，Future Mobility就将宝马i系列研发总工程师卡斯滕·布莱特菲尔德挖走出任CEO。4月19日，这家电动汽车公司再次挖走了宝马i系列研发团队的3位高管：原宝马i系列电机系统研发工程师德克·阿本德罗特将出任负责软件和联通的副总裁；原宝马i系列总设计师贝努瓦·雅克布将担任设计副总裁；原宝马i系列产品管理经理亨里克·文德斯将担任市场营销副总裁。 宝马i系列是宝马公司进军新能源汽车的主力。去年销量同比增长了66%，其中，宝马i3和i8分别销售了24057辆和5456辆。虽然宝马认为这一销量表明i系车型“取得了很大成功”，但还是没能阻挡四位核心高管的出走。德国媒体称，这相当于“宝马电动车一个核心研发设计团队全部被中方买走”。 法国媒体4月22日援引德国《焦点》周刊的这一报道时称，德国宝马电动车核心研发团队被中国连锅端地挖走，令德国人“大惊失色”。 《焦点》周刊则表示，中国人走出了一条新路，用重金聘请德国拔尖工程师和高管，通过这种方式把他们的知识技能买下来。 比如，中国的观致牌汽车便聘用了三位德国汽车业退休高管。虽然观致最后和德国品牌较劲失败，但在欧洲安全测试中，观致是成绩最优秀者。 而在其它行业也是如此。比如，2015年底，拜耳集团董事科尼希自愿退出董事会，以便接受中化集团的聘请。日前，在慕尼黑建筑机械展上，多个企业抱怨中方以带司机、高档住房和五位数的薪水全套聘礼来打动企业老工程师的心。 Future Mobility今年3月1日才正式注册，专门研发电动汽车。 虽然目前它无人知晓，但其实来头不小。Future Mobility是腾讯和富士康共同投资的一家新公司。 今年3月23日，腾讯CEO马化腾、富士康董事长郭台铭和郑州和谐汽车董事长冯长革在河南郑州共同签署了《关于“互联网+智能电动车”的战略合作框架协议》，宣称要在郑州搞“互联网+智能电动车平台”。据富士康公布的信息，“三方将组成联合专业工作团队，以腾讯对互联网行业的洞见、领先的互联网创意开放平台；搭配富士康在高科技移动终端、智能电动车的创新整合的设计与生产制造技术，打造，‘互联网+智能电动车平台’。和谐汽车具有营销和服务经验，注重未来汽车市场化的商业模式。” Future Mobility的研发中心不仅设置在总部深圳，同时也在台湾和慕尼黑建立相应的基地。另有媒体报道称，它还打算在硅谷建立一家研发中心，但生产基地会放在中国大陆。 据了解，由于新能源汽车被看作是中国品牌汽车超越外资品牌最好的机会，目前已经有越来越多的资金和跨领域企业涌入这一行业，从传统车企“挖角”正成为他们相互之间的默契，并不仅仅针对德国人。

In my previous blog , we thought about the past. Today, I'd like to contemplate, ruminate, and speculate about the future. Last week I spent a couple of days in New York attending a business meeting. My company booked me into a hotel called the Yotel , which is – in many ways – a "hotel of the future." When the taxi dropped me off from the airport, I entered the doors to the Yotel to be met and greeted by... a bank of computer screens. There wasn't a reception desk or anything "old-fashioned" like that. I entered my name on the computer at the prompt, selected the number of nights I was staying and the number of keys I required to my room (one), swished my credit card, and the key dropped out in a slot. Then I took an lift up to the 4th floor (where I discovered there was a reception desk) followed by another lift up to my room. My room was on the 19th floor, which made me a tad uneasy. Normally when I get to talk to a human receptionist I ask for a floor on a lower level. This is due to my experience being on the 30th floor of a hotel in Tokyo, Japan, many years ago when a large earthquake struck (but that's a story for another day). The room itself was spotless and crisp and clean and ... "compact" (or amazingly small, depending on your point of view). It took me some time to learn the various "systems" in the room. When I climbed into bed, for example, I thought it (a) had an enormous pillow and (b) it was intended only for very short people, because my feet stuck out over the end of the bed. But then, when I pressed what I presumed was the light switch on the side of the bed, the whole assembly unfolded and the enormous pillow transmogrified itself into part of the bed and everything grew much longer (I had lots of fun playing with this, as you might imagine). You know when you check out of a hotel but you want to leave your cases for a couple of hours, so you ask the concierge to store them for you. Well, there wasn't a concierge per se, but in the entrance hall to the Yotel, behind a huge glass wall, was a robot equivalent.   The idea is that you inform the robot that you want to store a case. It then retrieves a large metal drawer from a wall of the little scamps and presents this to you via a hatch type thing. You place your cases in the drawer, and then the robot takes the drawer and stuffs it back in the wall. It's all very efficient. On the one hand I found the whole Yotel experience to be a tad impersonal. Having said this, I requested an alarm call (as a back-up to my iPad alarm), but there was something wrong with the phone in my room and I never heard the hotel's call. So I was pleasantly surprised to receive a knock at the door and discover that they had sent someone up to check that everything was OK (I don't think I've ever had that happen in a hotel before). So, all-in-all it wasn't a bad experience. I can see that the Yotel format could easily become a model for the way hotels are run in the future. It cuts down on the number of staff they need and so forth ... but for myself, I still prefer human interaction. The future is here, but I don't think I'm ready for it...

In my blog Revisiting some electronics articles in the 1920s , we pondered the past. Today, I'd like to contemplate, ruminate, and speculate about the future. Last week I spent a couple of days in New York attending a business meeting. My company booked me into a hotel called the Yotel , which is – in many ways – a "hotel of the future." When the taxi dropped me off from the airport, I entered the doors to the Yotel to be met and greeted by... a bank of computer screens. There wasn't a reception desk or anything "old-fashioned" like that. I entered my name on the computer at the prompt, selected the number of nights I was staying and the number of keys I required to my room (one), swished my credit card, and the key dropped out in a slot. Then I took an lift up to the 4th floor (where I discovered there was a reception desk) followed by another lift up to my room. My room was on the 19th floor, which made me a tad uneasy. Normally when I get to talk to a human receptionist I ask for a floor on a lower level. This is due to my experience being on the 30th floor of a hotel in Tokyo, Japan, many years ago when a large earthquake struck (but that's a story for another day). The room itself was spotless and crisp and clean and ... "compact" (or amazingly small, depending on your point of view). It took me some time to learn the various "systems" in the room. When I climbed into bed, for example, I thought it (a) had an enormous pillow and (b) it was intended only for very short people, because my feet stuck out over the end of the bed. But then, when I pressed what I presumed was the light switch on the side of the bed, the whole assembly unfolded and the enormous pillow transmogrified itself into part of the bed and everything grew much longer (I had lots of fun playing with this, as you might imagine). You know when you check out of a hotel but you want to leave your cases for a couple of hours, so you ask the concierge to store them for you. Well, there wasn't a concierge per se, but in the entrance hall to the Yotel, behind a huge glass wall, was a robot equivalent.   The idea is that you inform the robot that you want to store a case. It then retrieves a large metal drawer from a wall of the little scamps and presents this to you via a hatch type thing. You place your cases in the drawer, and then the robot takes the drawer and stuffs it back in the wall. It's all very efficient. On the one hand I found the whole Yotel experience to be a tad impersonal. Having said this, I requested an alarm call (as a back-up to my iPad alarm), but there was something wrong with the phone in my room and I never heard the hotel's call. So I was pleasantly surprised to receive a knock at the door and discover that they had sent someone up to check that everything was OK (I don't think I've ever had that happen in a hotel before). So, all-in-all it wasn't a bad experience. I can see that the Yotel format could easily become a model for the way hotels are run in the future. It cuts down on the number of staff they need and so forth ... but for myself, I still prefer human interaction. The future is here, but I don't think I'm ready for it...  

Travelling in India over the last 10 days, I have been struck by the ebullience of the Indian people and the economy. India’s growth engine is in full gear and the economy is surging forward. Coming from the U.S., where the news is dominated by difficult issues of unemployment, soaring debt, and a weak economic recovery – and of course the Gulf oil spill, India’s news coverage seems void of these issues, and almost refreshing. It is a story of large deals, 34 percent year over year growth in car sales, booming housing and infrastructure construction, and a resurgent confidence in the capabilities of India Inc. and the Indian people. Yet, it is somewhat disquieting that there is almost a complete lack of coverage or interest in the Gulf oil spill. After all, the thought goes, the issue is of regional and geographic importance, but has little to do with India – other than the need to feel properly sympathetic.   There are often events that have limited real impact at a national level, but become defining moments as they change societal perception, awareness, and behavior. Incumbent industry leaders have great political power and are generally able to thwart any movement that negatively impacts them. However, certain events – such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, can deal a severe blow to the incumbent industry, far beyond what could have been predicted on the basis of actual damage done. As a result of these accidents, new nuclear plant starts in most parts of the world slowed virtually to zero, and the nuclear industry became a shadow of what it was in the late 1970’s. The Gulf oil spill has the potential to similarly transform the oil industry. One can argue that the Exxon Valdez oil spill did nothing to dampen the growth of the oil industry. That was a different time when there were no alternative solutions possible in the near term, and where the damage was well contained in a sparsely populated area in the U.S.   The recent oil spill is a potential game changer. At first glance, the immediate economic impact seems to be manageable – there was almost no impact on oil prices, and the estimated $30-50 billion in spill containment costs, will be covered by BP and/or the U.S. tax payer. Further, pictures of birds coated in oil have been seen before, and it almost appears that people have become insensitive to these images. However, several things can make this a defining moment. With explosive growth in the number of deep water wells, and the oil industry’s inability to control the situation, it shows the possibility of a runaway disaster that can pollute the waters for years. The impact on the pristine beaches of the Gulf, the ecologically fragile Louisiana marshes, and the wildlife living in that part of the world, will be immense and long lasting. This is in the U.S. economic mainstream, and fishermen and shrimpers will lose their livelihood and an already battered region could collapse. The oil pollution is already being picked up by the Gulf Stream and raises the question of how soon could the oil reach the Atlantic coast, even Europe.   While these are bad things, they’ve opened up the discussion about climate change, carbon emissions, and alternative energy. For the first time the energy industry appears vulnerable, and public opinion is willing to be convinced of an alternative plan, and may commit to efforts to find such an alternative. The license to drill for oil in deep waters is likely to run into severe opposition. An environmental protection fund to cover clean-up costs is likely, and will result in a tax on deep water oil. For the first time, the U.S. political process may have the popular support it needs to drive through changes that will permanently weaken the oil lobby. Given that many of the alternative energy technologies, such as biofuels, wind, and solar, are approaching price parity, modest incentives may be sufficient to stimulate the growth of these sectors. This can create the long-term shift in trajectory that is the only way that true transformative change occurs.   So should India care? The overall impact of the Gulf oil spill on oil prices and availability over the next decade is likely to be modest. However, if India is to become an economic and technology leader, it needs to pay attention to these shifts, and understand how the next wave of energy companies may permanently reduce the world’s dependence on oil.   # # #