Elon Musk 真是个讲故事的好手。

The future should look like the future.

虽然看着有些冰冷，虽然还有一段时间，但把这么激进的设计落地，真的令人佩服。

尤其那只手，和那辆大车。

我要收回之前的话，Tesla 不是下一个丰田，丰田太小了。

它更像「通用」，即是 GE，也是 GM。

在上个月去上海之前，@取景框看世界 在微信上邀请我一起做一期关于设计行业的科普视频，面向学生群体做一次对行业整体状况的分享。这次是 B站 向他发起的约稿，也是他频道的主要内容类型之一。答应他后，从上海回来我就根据自己这么些年的体会和反思，录了一期比较掏心窝的内容。由于参与的人比较多，直到前天，节目才终于上线。

因为参与的人数比较多，我说的话也比较多，所以在汇总的成片里需要剪掉一些。但我又觉得难得录一期视频（从去年11月到现在都没有更过视频了），为了保证表达的完整性，我还是得有一个自己的版本。但因为实在忙得顾不过来，于是麻烦 @小雨 帮我把这条视频剪了出来。

毕竟是 @怪物尚志 的御用摄影/后期，有他的帮忙，我的视频里头一回多了许多配合文案的动画，比我一个人在镜头前单口相声好看多了。这一期花絮，也在昨天发了出来，跟正片错开一天。

这期视频的封面是我昨晚用 midjourney 画的。

在这条视频里，除了科普工业设计的一些基本概念和行业现状，我也特别聊了一下 AIGC 和设计师之间的关系。前两个月虽然一直很忙，但我也一直在关注 AIGC 的动向。这两个月的变化实在是过于惊人了！

以下是我去年八九月用 midjourney 画的一些东西：

然而在这短短半年内，版本已经从当时的 v3 发展到了现在的 v5。ChatGPT 也从 GPT-3 发展到了 GPT-4，坊间传言 GPT-5 的研发已经完成且爬完了全网所有视频，可以直指某一条视频中的某一段话，只是还没发布。可以说开年后的这两个月内，AIGC 的发展速度已经大大超乎了预料，甚至正处于失控的边缘，它们正在开始颠覆一些东西。将来会发生什么，无法预料，但一定有什么事情已经在发生了。

所以我觉得，无论如何，再忙也得重新用起来。光是跟进各种新闻和消息是不行的，midjourney 前两天刚发布了由图片转译成 prompt 的新功能，多模态的 AI 已经不远了，这会更进一步推动人和 AI 之间的交互。我觉得，自己还是得保持使用状态才行。所以前两天我又重新充了值，开始体验它的新版本。

我先试着画了一些机甲的东西，例如这样的：

上面的两张的用 prompt 直接生成的，但下面的两张，是用 /remix 命令修改了部分描述词后的新图。可以看到下面的图和上面的图保持了相关性，于是我想试试，如果用这个命令替换背景会是什么效果，于是有了这组车的图：

上面的两张图是用 prompt 直接生成的，当我用 /remix 替换了背景描述的 prompt 之后，就生成了下面的两张。更换环境之后，车辆的姿态和镜头视角几乎没有变化，车身的反光与环境之间的关系也很自然，这个效果已经可以说非常惊人了！

然后，我随便画了一些白色的机器人站在燃烧废墟上的场景：

用 /remix 替换了机器人配色部分的描述词后，生成了下面这样的图：

对 /remix 有了基本的体感之后，我开始尝试用 /blend 命令来做一些融合的实验。

首先，我随便描述了一个赛博少女，得到一些随机的图：

接着，我再随便生成一个红发少女：

材料准备好之后，开始把它们进行组合。

第一次先尝试融合两张图，一个是游戏画风的机甲人，一个是二次元的赛博少女。

它们俩合成后，得到了以下这个人物：

新角色具备其中一张图里人物的长相特征与体态，也有另一张图的配色和机甲特点。虽然得到的结果具有随机性，但既然可以这样融合，那么应该也可以通过 /blend 命令来得到一些更有目的性的创作。

有了第一次的体验后，第二次我用三张图片进行合成：

图一是现画的半透明金属机器人，图二是上面准备好的红发少女，图三是现画的骑士。

这三个合成出来的新角色，同时具备了细碎的金色细节、波浪红发、银白色盔甲：

但这不是我想要的，我想试试加大红发少女的比例。在垫图的方式下，可以通过 –iw 命令来分配各个图片之间的权重占比，但是在 /blend 中不能这么操作。于是，我想通过把合成的新图作为素材，再一次与红发少女进行融合，并加入机甲的元素来强化她身上盔甲的质感。

二次合成使用的图，如下：

合成出来的新角色我非常满意！

她既有红发少女面部和眼神的特征，又把两副银白外甲融合得非常优雅，也保留了初始半透明金属机器人遗传下来的金色金属关节的特征，又做出了图三机甲的坚硬感和图一外甲的银白光泽。这一次的融合很成功。

但如果 /remix 可以局部替换特征，那么这些没有写 prompt 而是通过 /blend 直接合成的图，能否通过 /remix 加入新的 prompt 来修改已有的特征呢？

为了让实验效果明显一些，我想让盔甲的白色部分比例缩小，增加金属部分的比例，于是就先把这批图重新刷了几遍，直到出现肩甲是金色的变异版本：

然后不断在此基础上进一步变异，强化金色肩甲的特征：

准备好之后，我在 /remix 中添加新的 prompt：pink armor

以下是修改特征后的结果：

整体的效果我还是挺满意的。一来，新生成的人物很好地保持了最初红发少女的眼神和神态；二来，金色金属被替换成粉色金属后，金属质感的表达是正确的。虽然头发也一起变成了粉色，这确实是没完全理解指令，但原有的发色搭配新的粉色盔甲也确实不是很和谐。

到此，重新开始用 AIGC 工具的热身完毕，找回一些感觉了。

至于这期视频封面里用到的车图，是我昨晚用 Maserati 和 Ferrari 以及 Apple 和 Tesla 分别杂糅出来的缝合怪。虽然乍一看好像没什么新奇的，但是如果我把去年八月底用 midjourney 画的汽车拿出来对比，就会意识到这是多么疯狂的进化速度了：

上面三个是去年八月用 v3 画的车；

下面这些是昨晚用 v5 画的车：

虽然工业设计有大量的细化和落地工作是 AI 无法干的，但从目前来看，无论是 midjourney 还是 Stable Diffusion + controlNET 都已经可以很好地帮助设计师完成概念发散和快速枚举了。这样的图像质量，通过垫图、remix 和 blend 的组合使用，完全可以在创意初期快速拉出一批高质量的「草图」，设计师可以把更多的精力放在对方案思路的推敲、对细节的考据以及各个环节的沟通协调上。

从今年二三月开始到往后的十一二年，人类社会将迎来一场以破坏为开端的变革和创新。

无论我们是否愿意，都将一起进入新的世界。

A hugely controversial company that aims to transform the future of transportation, and our world by introducing an electricity revolution, Tesla has been in the media spotlight for years. As its valuation surpassed all other car manufacturers that sell much more cars and have much more history than Tesla, we must ask ourselves, does the magical story of Tesla really stands?

Chapter 1: Elon’s cult of personality

Elon Musk has received many praises throughout the years and has managed to gather a very enthusiastic following. Arguably, he can be considered as a social media influencer that utilizes his following to achieve his goals. He frequently interacts with his fanbase on twitter and replies to requests from random users which keeps the flame going. It is like having a hand-shaking meeting which is practiced by singers and others alike in Japan, where their fans would be able to shake their hands and the star would typically say a sentence in return. This has proven to be hugely successful in Japan, and based on Elon’s twitter feed, the same works online.

His cult of personality has grown through arguably one of his most damning failures, the production numbers of Tesla Model 3, where for months the actual production numbers remained much less than his promised ones, and as Tesla faced more bottlenecks in increasing production capacity, he kept on promising more without delivering. However, he even managed to turn this in his personal following’s favor, when he finally delivered by pulling some ‘superman tactics’, such as by working extremely long hours, sleeping in the factory, being actual hands on with the production line, building a temporary factory in a tent, and flying in equipment from Germany. However, if we cut out Elon’s cult of personality, we will see that this as a huge red flag instead of Elon pulling his magic. It is unfathomable that Elon as the CEO of Tesla has to get on the production lines to make things worked out, as he was instead wasting precious time needed to make proper, good, and reasonable decisions as the CEO instead of a production line worker. Tesla does not pay him to be on the production lines making tweaks, Tesla pays him to make those proper, good, and reasonable decisions that he neglected to do, when he instead made bold claims about the production numbers without a way of fulfilling it. Flying in heavy equipment was the solution to increasing the production numbers but had there been better planning, such an expensive manoeuvre could have been avoided entirely.

The truth is, Elon remains much less than a responsible CEO and is more of an engineer that likes to focus more on the technical as seen by his role as chief engineer in SpaceX. A responsible CEO would not have said ‘The coronavirus panic is dumb’, ‘Am considering Tesla private at $420’, ‘Tesla stock price is too high imo’, and much more. What Elon has instead continuously demonstrated is that he is very much still an individual that is not willing to be bound by his duties and rules that apply to him, and such an individual in charge of the biggest car manufacturer in the world by valuation, makes him Tesla’s greatest asset and liability at the same time.

Chapter 2: Underlying culture

‘Autopilot’ is a feature that can be included in Tesla EVs, but the term is misleading. For one, assisted driving technology is classified into different tiers, each representing the extent that machine is in control of the car, or autonomous level. Tesla’s autopilot feature is classified as level 2 where the car can act autonomously but requires constant driver supervision who needs to be prepared to take over control at all times. A German court has ruled Tesla’s claims misleading and there have been numerous cases where the driver who is supposedly in constant supervision instead falls asleep or is on their phone. The National Transportation Safety Board have criticized Tesla’s lack of system safeguards in a fatal 2018 Autopilot crash in California and for failing to foresee and prevent the ‘predictable abuse’ of autopilot.

The fact is, although the claims on ‘Autopilot’ are believed to be abusive and dangerous or at the minimum, misleading by many professionals, they are kept in Tesla’s marketing. This decision is just one of the many intentionally made decisions that show a truer picture of Tesla’s culture, one that does not consider itself to be accountable to rules that apply to Tesla, just like its CEO.

One such instance happened in China, the biggest car market in the world and where Tesla has gained huge grounds, some literal, as Gigafactory 2 was opened in Shanghai a few months ago. Just as the sales of Tesla cars grew, so did the problems that encountered it. Tesla has been ordered to recall 30,000 cars by the China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, but instead of addressing the suspension problem that forced the order to recall those cars, Tesla instead blamed it on ‘driver abuse’ without offering any evidence to support the claim. This came after Tesla executives were summoned by the China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology back in March 2020 because Tesla used the old version of computer chips in Model 3s instead of the new version as promised to the consumers, which sparked outrage and resulted in the same Chinese government agency to formally require Tesla to immediately correct the chip downgrade, which Tesla again, instead of recognizing the problem and their own fault, blamed their actions on the supply chain disruption due to COVID-19.

As these stories show, the below-grade manufacturing is far from just a few instances in Tesla, be it in China or elsewhere. It is in fact the culture of Tesla that causes this, of course, at the expense of its customers and potential future sales.

Beyond manufacturing problems that are caused by this culture, these has been numerous whistleblowers and articles that is alleging all sorts of crazy acts happening within Tesla. Mr. Karl Hansen has filed a lawsuit alleging Elon and Tesla’s management have ‘intentionally interfered with efforts to seek employment with other employers in retaliation for outspoken union support’, actively concealed and participated in spying on its employees, improper contracts, theft orchestrated by organized crimes, terminated a Tesla employee’s contract after reporting the theft of $13,000 USD of copper wire to law enforcement, and more. There are more claims after from Mr. Hansen’s, and numerous lawsuits have been filed in what is described by some media as ‘Whistleblower Hell’. It is likely that we continue to see more allegations to come out of Tesla, a terrible position to be in for anyone, especially so for a company that dissolved its U.S. PR unit in October 2020.

To a large extent, Elon is Tesla, and so is his mentality the Tesla culture. Just as his successes support the entire company, so does his own problems creep in. This translates into troubles for Tesla, and if not managed well enough, could be potential deathtraps that threatens the existence of the company itself. The mentality of Elon Musk to ignore the rules whether social expectations, constraints, or perfectly legitimate laws has sparked equal number of innovations and PR crises that lacks a PR department to manage (in the U.S.), and this does not always mean well for the culture of any company, let alone a multinational which is the most valuable car maker in the world.

Simply put, Tesla’s history of troubling actions will continue into the future as it is the company culture that shapes its actions, and Elon’s mentality that shapes its culture.

Chapter 3: Tesla China

Tesla in 2018 became the first foreign car manufacturer to be in sole possession of its Chinese subsidiary, this is followed by the construction of Gigafactory 2 in Shanghai after being offered very beneficial terms by the Shanghai Municipal Government. Construction progressed at a rapid pace and production started just 1 year later in 2019. One of the most impactful effect that Giga Shanghai has brought has been the lowered production cost of Tesla EVs in China, since localized production gets rid of import taxes and lower cost overall. As a result, Tesla has been able to lower its offerings in China to attract more customers, but the way this has been accomplished has tainted its image.

The way that Tesla has lowered the price of its offerings can be described as bad business practice at best, and on the far end, intentionally fooling its customers. Tesla lowers its prices without any prior warning or compensation for customers that have purchased the cars right before the price was lowered. Often customers find themselves to have purchased the car the very day before the price decrease, when Tesla sales agents employ marketing techniques to urge customers make the purchase quickly, presumably before the price is lowered. It is not one, or twice, or thrice that Tesla has lowered its prices this way, but Tesla has adjusted its prices near 60 times after entering the Chinese market which saw the price of Model 3 slashed in half. Predictably this has angered customers that think they were tricked into buying the cars right before the price decrease, often without any compensation and this has sparked outcry on Chinese social media.

Lowering the price of products is generally a good thing for a business because it attracts more customers, but the way that Tesla has done it has made Chinese consumers weary of purchasing Tesla cars because there would be no guarantee that the price would drop by 10% right after you have made the purchase.

Apart from the price issue, Tesla has sparked more outcry on Chinese social media after the recent article that came out with allegation such as quality control issues, ‘Giga-sweatshop’, Tesla operations in Greater China being isolated from the rest of the world bringing opportunities to use practices banned by the company elsewhere, and sales personnel selling Model 3s through private channels at a discount, in stark opposition with the direct sales model that Tesla embraces.

PingWest is the media that published the article, and this is the third instalments of their ‘Tesla China chaos’ series. Only the third is translated into English, and the Chinese version offers much more detail and includes links to the first two instalments of the series.

Chapter 4: Giga Shanghai, my observations and speculations

Disclaimer: My words do not constitute professional opinion, investment advice, or any similar notion in any way, it is only my personal speculation as a tourist and is not meant to be taken seriously beyond the mere literary expression, and the actions you take out of my words is taken entirely at your own responsibility.

In this chapter, I will only address the latest instalment of the series by combining what is described in the article and what I saw and speculate as a result at Tesla’s Giga Shanghai.

There was nothing notable about the factory, the east side expansion was on its way and trucks transporting construction materials were parked on the side of the road. However, given what I was able to see through the extremely limited information outside of the factory, I believe that the article mentioned prior is true.

On the road out of the factory gates, the side is littered with primarily 2 kinds of rubbish, masks and food packaging, in particular, masks were on top of food packaging suggesting that the food packaging existed before the pandemic began. This corroborates with the claim that Giga Shanghai’s food options have been deteriorating since it opened (in 2019, before the pandemic) and inadequate. The container made guard room at the gate of the factory also show signs of trouble, I was unable to take pictures inside due to the guards but if you believe what I say, there was the phone number for the local police station placed at a prominent position that is easy for viewing by the guards. I believe that it was placed later and was not there initially because it was in an awkward position, put on the wall surrounded by plans of the factory and other images, far away on the left-side from where other phone numbers are posted (on the right-side). This has led me to believe that the police number was put there later because they did not put it along with all the other phone numbers (that were on the right-side of the wall), but only felt it was necessary later, potentially due to the chaos described by PingWest.

The other speculation I would make is that Giga Shanghai faces management chaos. This is the car transporter truck that came out of the factory and this is the same truck a few minutes later stopped at the end of a road. You can tell it is the same truck because it carries Teslas and is white, the other car transporter truck that came out of the factory around that time is blue. The white truck stopped at the end of the road where I observed all other trucks make a U-turn to head towards the highway. I was unable to take a picture of the two workers (due to fear of increased risk as I have lingered around the factory for sometime already) so you have to take my word for it. Two workers were standing on the left side of the truck, one appears to be the driver as the driver’s cabin door was open and there was no one inside, and he wore the driver’s uniform I saw earlier, and the other one appears to be another type of worker, potentially a supervisor as he wore a different uniform than the two kinds I saw earlier. The ‘supervisor’ was holding a binder that contained documents and a pen, and he appeared to be checking with the driver on something. While it is impossible to speculate on the content of the binder or what they were specifically checking on, I believe this shows the management chaos as no reasonable company would conduct its final checks on its deliveries right outside the factory instead of inside, because of the increased risk. Furthermore, this appears to be an isolated instance as I did not see the blue truck that departed later, suggesting that they only discovered something wrong with the white truck last minute and managed to stop it right outside of the factory. In the best sense this shows mismanagement as it is risky to park a truck full of newly made cars at a road construction site, worse this shows the chaos in management that even the checks on new deliveries cannot be done properly.

Tesla has come far and has made giant leaps. Elon Musk has been monumental for Tesla in terms of pushing it to come to where it is today. Not willing to obey the rules is the reason behind Tesla’s numerous innovations, but also its crises. A Chinese proverb says that ‘water floats, and sinks a ship’, what has made Tesla Tesla, could also ultimately be its downfall.

Images taken at Giga Shanghai

Further reading

252 judgements: Behind the lawsuits that Tesla brought onto itself in China (in Chinese)

Bibliography

Tesla’s ‘Autopilot’ misleading, Germany rules

NTSB warns about law oversight of new car tech

US agency opens probe into 115,000 Tesla vehicles over suspension issue

Tesla, recalling 30,000 cars in China, blames ‘driver abuse’

Tesla attributes recall of nearly 50,000 cars in China to driver abuse

Tesla is in trouble with the Chinese government after it quietly downgraded the chips in some of its Model 3 cars

How Elon Musk built a Tesla factory in China in less than a year

Tesla to recall 3,183 Model X vehicles in China, market regulator