Xiaopeng, Weilai and other new car-making forces turned to NVIDIA to catch up with Tesla

January 5 news, according to foreign media reports, the United States chip manufacturer Nvidia said on Tuesday local time that it has reached more agreements with a number of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers. The manufacturers want to use NVIDIA's technology to power software-driven features that could appeal to Tesla's customers.

Speaking at the CES technology conference, Ali Kani, vice president of NVIDIA, named several Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers, including Polestar, Xiaopeng, NIO, Ideal, Zhiji And SAIC R, who will use NVIDIA's DRIVE technology as part of the computer brain of the new car.

Nvidia said auto suppliers and contract makers Desay, Flex, Quanta, Valeo and ZF will also use their Drive platform as the basis for their autonomous vehicle systems designed for eviancies brands.

Nvidia has released its latest generation of self-driving car platform: Drive Hyperion 8. Nvidia just unveiled the latest technology for self-driving cars and trucks at CES 2022. The latest generation of drive platforms uses the NVIDIA Drive Orin system of chips, 12 surround cameras, 9 radars, 12 ultrasonic, 1 front-facing lidar, and 3 internal sensing cameras.

"The design architecture of this self-driving car is very functionally safe," Canney said. If a computer or sensor fails, it can also provide backups to ensure that self-driving cars can take passengers to a safe place. With each online update, these new electric vehicles will get better and better. These companies can benefit from new software-driven business models. ”

Nvidia had previously estimated the company's revenue from its automotive business to be $8 billion over the next six years. Tuesday's presentation highlighted the importance of China's vibrant electric vehicle industry to the U.S. chip company's expansion of its automotive business. Currently, the electric vehicle business accounts for only a small fraction of NVIDIA's total annual revenue and is expected to exceed $26 billion.

Nvidia is also looking to grow in the emerging autonomous truck business. Self-driving truck developer Tucson Future announced it would use Nvidia chips to develop self-driving semi-trailer trucks, it said earlier Tuesday. Self-driving taxi services such as Cruise, Zoox and Didi, as well as trucking services such as Volvo, Navistar and Plus, are also using Drive Hyperion.

Danny Shapiro, Nvidia's vice president of automotive, said the company will leverage the China partnership and data centers in China to ensure that the data used to train automotive artificial intelligence remains in China.

Both old and new automakers are racing to catch up with Tesla's first software-driven features, which can change how vehicles behave, battery range or levels of self-driving capabilities through over-the-air updates.

High-performance in-vehicle computers are essential to what the industry calls "software-driven vehicles," creating new markets for companies like Nvidia, whose core business is to design powerful chips for data processing centers and video game devices.