Nvidia said on Monday it is expanding its collaborations with BYD and other Chinese carmakers that are racing to build self-driving vehicles and AI-augmented infotainment technology to compete in global markets.
BYD, which overtook Tesla last year as the world’s top
electric vehicle manufacturer, will use Nvidia’s next generation of in-vehicle
chips, called Drive Thor, to enable increased levels of autonomous driving and
other digital functions, Nvidia said.
BYD will also use Nvidia technology to streamline factories
and its supply chain, as well as to develop virtual showrooms, Danny Shapiro,
Nvidia’s vice-president for automotive, said during a conference call.
“Drive Thor is going into BYD [vehicles] next year,” Shapiro
said.
Chinese carmakers BYD, Xpeng and GAC Aion’s Hyper brand are
among several carmakers and autonomous truck developers that announced expanded
collaborations with Nvidia on Monday as part of the chipmaker’s GTC developer
conference in San Jose, California. Chinese carmakers Zeekr, a unit of Geely,
and Li Auto had previously said they would use Nvidia’s Drive Thor technology.
Chinese car companies are turning to Nvidia as they use
advanced technology to compensate for what they currently lack in global brand
recognition. BYD and its rivals are driving to expand sales in Europe,
Southeast Asia and other markets outside China, while competing with Tesla and
other established Western vehicle brands in their home market.
“There’s a massive number of Chinese carmakers,” Shapiro
said. “They have a lot of incentives in place to innovate, a lot of regulation
that’s favourable” to developing increasing levels of automated driving.
Among other new automotive and industrial partnerships
announced by Nvidia on Monday is a collaboration with US software company
Cerence to adapt large language model (LLM) artificial-intelligence systems for
in-car computing, Shapiro said.
Chinese computer maker Lenovo is also collaborating with
Nvidia on LLM deployment, Nvidia said.
Soundhound will use Nvidia technology to develop an
in-vehicle voice command system that could allow a vehicle owner to obtain
information from a virtual owners manual using speech commands.
Nvidia did not refer to OpenAI or other LLM developers by
name.