为什么说谷歌应该收购特斯拉

    上周Facebook以190亿美元的价格收购了WhatsApp，借此与苹果（Apple）和微软（Microsoft）等早期技术领头羊们划清了界限，表明Facebook不仅现在、而且将来也要继续垄断社交领域的决心，而且它也愿意付高价来买下未来有可能挑战它的企业。相比之下，苹果和微软则相信他们可以赶上、超越新来的玩家（而且他们也经常能做到这一点，虽然也不总是这样），因此它们很少在收购上花冤枉钱。以后我会写一篇博客文章专门讨论微软将会收购哪家公司来保持自己的统治地位，但现在我们先按下不表。

    眼下，Facebook对WhatsApp的收购让我不禁开始揣测谷歌的下一次收购。谷歌对自己核心领域——也就是搜索技术的垄断几乎牢不可破，因此，与其收购有可能的下一代竞争对手，还不如扩展到一个新的商机领域。那么哪个市场的潜力足以吸引谷歌的兴趣呢？那就是汽车业。2013年，全球汽车市场的规模达到了２万亿美元，足够激起谷歌的兴趣了。但是要想在汽车业的激烈竞争中脱颖而出，谷歌就必须要跨越现有的汽车技术。而如今的科技水平已经达到了这个跨越的临界点。

    经过多年的量变积累，汽车业已经进化到了质变的节点上。未来几十年，汽车很可能会变得更智能，也很可能变成完全由电池驱动。谷歌已经抓住时机当上了自动驾驶汽车技术的领头羊，但他们的内部测试还需要第三方汽车作为平台，然后用谷歌的技术对这些车型进行改造。这一点限制了谷歌对最终产品进行充分优化的能力。另外，谷歌也没有能够造一辆自动电动汽车（AEC，也就是能自动驾驶的电动汽车）的能力，而我认为这才是汽车未来的进化方向。谷歌要想领导这种转型，可能就得需要具备自行生产汽车的能力。

    现在，有一家汽车公司的很多特质使它成为了谷歌的理想收购目标，它就是特斯拉。如果谷歌能够收购特斯拉，就能大大加快自动电动汽车的研发速度。谷歌能从交易中获得特斯拉先进的电池技术，顶尖的制造工艺和一批出色的工程师。加上他们自己的专利和创新氛围，一切将会为研发自动电动汽车所需的技术提供坚实的基础。由于特斯拉在汽车制造和引入新的汽车技术上走得很前沿，因此，它能让谷歌有最大的机会研发出一款有吸引力的、价格适当的自动电动汽车。

    自动电动汽车的两大核心技术分别是电池和激光雷达。谷歌向丰田（Toyota）、奥迪和雷克萨斯购买了一批普通轿车作为试验车，然后给它们安装上价值15万美元左右的设备，把它们变成无人驾驶汽车，其中光是激光雷达的成本就高达7万美元。激光雷达是一种遥控传感技术，它利用激光来辅助仪器建立汽车周边环境的3D图像。激光雷达探测的数据将与GPS数据和谷歌的高分辨率地图一道，由计算机算法进行分析，然后用来控制汽车的运动。

    从某种角度上来看，它只是一个扫地机器人Roomba的复杂版本（当然复杂程度要高出许多）。Roomba已经成了几百万个家庭的家居小帮手。它可以自动探测一个房间的布局，然后选择清扫的路径，既保证把每一个角度都打扫干净，同时又保证行进的路径最短。当然Roomba的行进速度与汽车完全不可同日而语，而且，就算它撞到什么东西，也不会造成任何后果。另外，一个更加复杂版的Roomba，也就是一个可以用iPhone遥控的汽车玩具Anki已经证明，机器人学和人工智能技术可以应用到自动驾驶汽车上。Anki虽然现在只是一款玩具，但它无疑已经预示了自动驾驶汽车的潜力。

    When Facebook (FB) acquired WhatsApp last week for $19 billion, it set itself apart from earlier generation technology leaders like Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT). Facebook has decided that it wants to own the social space now, as well as in the future, and is willing to pay an ostensibly high price to ensure owning rising players who may one day challenge them. By contrast, Apple and Microsoft believed they could catch up and surpass new entrants (and were both often, but not always, correct) and therefore rarely paid a premium for acquisitions. We will return to this theme in a future blog post by speculating who Microsoft could buy to help ensure more control over its domain going forward.

    For now, WhatsApp's acquisition led me to think about Google's next acquisition. Since Google (GOOG) has ironclad control over its core domain, search, one M&A strategy is to expand into new areas of opportunity rather than to acquire next-generation competitors (as there aren't any). What market offers a large enough opportunity to tempt Google? Autos. The worldwide 2013 auto market totaled about $2 trillion, enough to stimulate Google's interest. But Google will need to leapfrog existing auto technology to have an advantage versus entrenched competition. Technology has progressed to the point where this is possible.

    After years of only incremental improvements, the car industry is approaching a period of fundamental change. Over the next few decades, cars appear likely to become more autonomous and entirely battery powered. Google has seized the chance to become the early leader in technology for Autonomous Cars (ACs), or vehicles that drive themselves. But their beta test required using third-party cars and retrofitting them with Google technology. This limits Google's ability to fully optimize the finished product. Google also does not have the battery technology to create an Autonomous Electric Car (AEC), which I think will be the car of the future. Leading the transformation may require the capability of building one's own cars.

    There is one auto company that has many of the characteristics that make it an ideal acquisition target for Google: Tesla (TSLA). If Google acquired Tesla, it could accelerate the development of the AEC. Google would have access to Tesla's advanced battery technology, state of the art manufacturing, and brilliant engineers which, combined with their own technology and innovative atmosphere, would provide a strong foundation for developing and implementing the features needed in, and desired of, an AEC. Because Tesla is so advanced in its manufacturing and in the introduction of technology within a car, it could provide Google with the strongest opportunity to create an AEC that is attractive at a marketable price.

    The two key technologies in an AEC are the battery and Lidar (laser radar). Google has taken ordinary cars from Toyota (TM), Audi, and Lexus and outfitted them with about $150,000 in equipment to convert them to robotic cars. The Lidar system consumes about $70,000 of that amount. Lidar is a remote sensing technology using lasers to help create a detailed 3-D map of a car's surroundings. This information plus the GPS system location data and Google's high-resolution maps are then fed into algorithms that control the car's movement.

    In a way, this is just a much (much) more sophisticated version of the robotic vacuum cleaner, the Roomba, which is found in millions of home and maps the layout of a room and then determines a route to clean the floor that insures full coverage while traversing a relatively minimal distance. Of course the Roomba travels at a fraction of the speed of a car and won't hurt anyone if it crashes. Similarly, a more sophisticated version of Roomba, Anki, has already proven that the robotics and AI technology for self-driving cars is possible. The Anki application is currently in toys but certainly foreshadows the potential for ACs.