本周一，美國通用汽車公司決定將其歐洲業務出售給法國的標志雪鐵龍集團（PSA）。此舉表明通用汽車著眼于汽車行業越來越依賴軟件和服務的實際，寧可犧牲一部分全球市場，也要提升利潤的決心。

如果不算在德國的歐寶和在英國的沃克斯豪爾這兩個子品牌，去年通用的全球銷量大約是880萬輛汽車，在爭奪全球最大汽車廠商的競爭中，遠遠落后于德國大眾和日本豐田。

2016年，歐寶和沃克斯豪爾兩大品牌合計銷售了近120萬輛汽車，總收益約為187億美元，約占通用汽車總營收的11%。

不過，盡管通用在歐洲使盡了渾身解數——比如投資于新車型設計，研發更環保的發動機，想方設法提高歐洲工廠的效率，給38,000多名員工發薪水等等，但這些努力卻并沒有什么明顯成效，通用的歐洲部門自1999年以來便一直陷入虧損。

通用汽車公司本周一表示，如果該公司去年就賣掉了歐寶，那么憑借這20億美元的轉手費，通用就有了足夠的現金儲備進行股票回購，每購收益也將增長5個百分點，雖然公司營收將不可避免地下降10%。

盡管歐洲業務歷經多年掙扎依然無法止損，但通用的北美業務卻呈現了井噴。在經歷了2009年美國政府主導下的破產重組后，通用汽車的國內市場業務得到了浴火重生，雖然它旗下的品牌和經銷商數量乃至員工人數都有所縮減，但是它欠債權人和退休員工的錢卻也少了很多。

2009年以來，借著低油價的東風，北美市場的高性能皮卡和SUV的銷量強勢反彈。2016年，通用的北美市場稅前利潤成功突破了10%。

為了讓北美市場的利潤機器繼續開足馬力，通用必須繼續追加對SUV和皮卡車型的投資，同時也要斥巨資于環保技術的研發，使這些車輛能夠滿足日益苛刻的聯邦能源經濟指標。

歐洲也同樣需要更環保的車型。然而歐洲市場是以柴油車和小排量汽油車當道的，就算通用花了大價錢針對這些發動機進行了優化，同樣的技術對美國市場也并無裨益，畢竟美國市場的半壁江山是由大排量汽油車撐起的——不少皮卡使用的都是八缸引擎。

通用汽車CEO瑪麗?博拉本周一對分析師表示：“通用在歐洲的產品組合，與它在其他市場的產品組合只有20%的重疊。”因此通用認為，光靠其歐洲部門自身，是無法在排放技術上實現規模經濟效益的。

PSA集團CEO唐唯實（Carlos Tavares）相信，歐寶的營收入和銷量將使PSA在與大眾和雷諾等歐洲廠商的競爭中占據一定優勢。PSA旗下品牌主要有標志、雪鐵龍和DS。通用對PSA的發展似乎也十分看好，它還將認購PSA集團4.2%的無表決股權。

2009年，通用汽車董事會否決了將歐寶和沃克斯豪爾出售給以汽車零部件供應商麥格納國際（Magna International）和俄羅斯聯邦儲蓄銀行（Sberbank）為首的一個財團的動議。而今年通用汽車終于決定撤出西歐市場，這也反映出了2009年以來，國際汽車市場的兩個重大變化。

第一個變化是中國成為了全球最大的汽車市場，2016年，中國的汽車銷量達到了近2800萬輛，預計未來還將繼續增長。

隨著中國市場的增長，通用必須將更多工程研發資金和資本投資轉向中國，而中國市場的增量最終也將能夠取代出售歐寶所犧牲掉的部分全球銷量。

2016年，光是通用在華的高端子品牌別克的銷量就超過了歐寶和沃克斯豪爾，上汽通用（即通用與上海汽車工業集團的合資公司）主打小型商務車市場的五菱品牌的銷量也超過了這兩家公司。

第二大變化是，自2009年以來，各大汽車廠商紛紛開始研發以電能驅動的智能汽車。這種汽車的一大特點是它們是以里程付費的，而不是像傳統汽車那樣可以以車貸的形式購買。

上個月當博拉被問到通用汽車是否需要更激進的重組以推高股價時，博拉表示：“在我們對未來的投資上，我認為‘交通即服務’（Transportation-as-a-service）將是一個巨大的商機”，并表示“用科技推動產業轉型的機遇”很可能將改變通用汽車的估值。

博拉還表示，通用并不需要歐洲工廠為公司在歐洲提供專車服務。

不過投資者們尚未改變他們的看法。畢馬威會計事務所美洲汽車業務部的負責人蓋瑞?西爾博格認為，以谷歌母公司Alphabet為代表的一些硅谷企業，以及以Uber為代表的專車服務在汽車數字化系統上擁有很大優勢。另外，汽車廠商要想成功開發出自動駕駛功能，首先需要解決的就是處理海量數據的問題。

西爾伯格指出：“人才戰爭對于贏得市場絕對是至關重要的，”而那些人工智能系統領域的人才“是不會為汽車公司工作的”。

去年，通用斥資5億美元（甚至可能追加了金額）收購了舊金山的一家機器人駕駛技術創業公司Cruise Automation，這種收購已經成為汽車行業的一種新業態。就在通用汽車出手后不久，福特汽車公司也斥資10億美元收購了一家機器人駕駛技術創業公司Argo AI，并將繼續追加投資推動該公司的后續研發。

通用汽車CEO博拉此前曾向投資者承諾，要使投資者回報率達到20%或以上。該公司本周一表示，在完成歐洲部門的出售后，該公司將擁有20億美元現金用于股權回購，而公司的資本支出每年也將下降10億美元。

博拉和其他公司高管此前表示，由于公司面臨著要向股東貢獻更高收益的壓力，因而不得不做出一些艱難的決定。拋棄一個擁有近80年歷史的老品牌，顯然是通用汽車歷史上最大的大事之一。此舉的成敗也將決定博拉未來將給通用汽車留下哪些遺產。（財富中文網）

譯者：樸成奎

General Motors Co’s deal on Monday to sell its European operations to France's PSA Group doubles down on a bet that the company can win by being less global but more profitable in an auto industry increasingly dependent on software and services.

Without the German Opel and British Vauxhall brands, GM last year would have sold about 8.8 million vehicles, far behind Germany's Volkswagen AG and Japan's Toyota Motor Corp in the race to be the world's largest automaker.

Opel and Vauxhall combined sold nearly 1.2 million vehicles and generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2016, about 11 percent of GM's total.

However, all of GM's activity in Europe - the investments in new model designs and cleaner engines, the efforts to make factories more efficient and the wages paid to 38,000 employees - has generated nothing but losses since 1999.

GM said on Monday that if it had not had Opel last year and had instead used the $2 billion shedding the unit will free up from its cash reserves to buy back stock, earnings per share would have risen 5 percent, even though revenue would have been 10 percent lower.

Meanwhile, business in North America has boomed. GM's home market operations were reborn as a smaller company due in part to the U.S. government-led bankruptcy in 2009, with fewer brands, fewer dealers, fewer employees and far less money owed to creditors and retirees.

Since 2009, cheap gasoline has powered a boom in sales of high-profit pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, lifting GM's North American pretax profit margins to just above 10 percent in 2016.

To keep the North American profit machine revved up, GM must invest in new SUVs and trucks, as well as expensive technology to enable them to meet rising federal fuel economy targets.

Europe is demanding cleaner cars, too. But far less of the technology GM would buy to clean up European diesels and tiny gasoline engines would be useful in the United States, where larger gasoline engines – including eight-cylinder motors used in pickup trucks – dominate the market.

"Only 20 percent of the (European) portfolio overlapped with rest of General Motors' portfolio," Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra told analysts on Monday. That is why GM has concluded it cannot achieve significant economies of scale in emissions technology for Europe on its own.

PSA CEO Carlos Tavares is betting Opel's revenue and sales volume would help give his company, which makes Peugeot, Citroen and DS cars, an advantage against rivals such as Volkswagen and Renault SA. GM is in on that bet because it will receive warrants equivalent to a 4.2 percent non-voting stake in the French company.

GM's decision to walk away from Western Europe highlights two other profound shifts since 2009, when the board scuttled a deal to sell Opel and Vauxhall to a group led by auto supplier Magna International and Russia's Sberbank.

The first is China, now the world's largest auto market, with roughly 28 million vehicles sold in 2016 and more growth forecast to come.

As China grows, GM will need to shift more vehicle engineering money and capital investment to feed that market, which could eventually replace much of the global sales volume sacrificed by the sale of Opel.

Buick, GM's primary brand in China, outsold Opel and Vauxhall in 2016. So did the Wuling brand of small commercial vehicles the company builds with partner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp.

Also since 2009, automakers have begun racing to transform cars into electrified, intelligent devices that are paid for by the mile instead of purchased on installment plans.

Asked last month whether GM needed more radical restructuring to lift its share price, Barra said "the way that we are investing in the future, which I think is a huge opportunity, with transportation-as-a-service" and "the opportunity that technology has to transform this industry" could change how the company is valued.

GM does not need factories in Europe to offer ride services there, she said.

However, investors have not changed their views yet. Gary Silberg, head of KPMG's Americas automotive practice, said Silicon Valley companies such as Alphabet Inc and ride services leader Uber Technologies Inc had the edge in the digital systems and the people needed to work with the terabytes of data required to make a car drive itself.

"The war for talent is absolutely essential to winning in the marketplace," Silberg said. And those adept in artificial intelligence systems "are not going to work for the auto industry."

GM demonstrated the industry's new economics last year when it agreed to pay $500 million, and potentially more, for tiny San Francisco robotic driving technology startup Cruise Automation. Ford Motor Co followed suit with a $1 billion deal to bring aboard and fund the future work of robotic vehicle startup Argo AI.

GM's Barra has promised investors returns of 20 percent or more. The company said on Monday that after completing the European sale, it would have $2 billion to accelerate share repurchases, and capital spending would be reduced by about $1 billion a year.

The pressure on GM to deliver high returns to shareholders forces tough decisions, Barra and other senior GM executives have said. The decision to abandon Opel after nearly 80 years is the most momentous yet, and the success or failure of that bet could define her legacy.