Tesla's Chinese Rivals BYD, Xpeng Embrace Nvidia's DRIVE Thor Platform To Boost Autonomous Ambitions

Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) said on Monday that leading Chinese EV giant BYD Co Ltd (OTC:BYDDY) (OTC:BYDDF) will use its DRIVE Thor in-vehicle computing platform to build its next generation of EV fleets in an attempt to deliver autonomous driving, among other capabilities.

What Happened: GAC Aion‘s luxury brand Hyper and XPeng (NYSE:XPEV) will also use the computer to power their next generation of both consumer and commercial fleets, the chip maker said. This could include robotaxis and autonomous delivery vehicles, it added. Li Auto (NASDAQ:LI) and Zeekr have already announced that they will be using the centralized car computer.

DRIVE Thor, announced in 2022, is slated for production vehicles starting next year and can deliver feature-rich cockpit capabilities in addition to automated driving.

The company said on Monday that BYD, in addition to building the next-generation EV fleet on the platform, will also be using the company’s AI infrastructure for cloud-based AI development and training technologies.

Hyper’s next-generation EVs will be built on the platform starting next year and will have level 4 driving capabilities. XPeng will employ the platform as the AI Brain of its next generation of EV fleet, it added.

Why It Matters: Nvidia also delivers computing to U.S. EV giant Tesla Inc. which is also looking to achieve autonomous driving. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has previously pinned the delay in achieving autonomous driving on a shortage of computing power.

However, last week, the CEO said that the shortage is largely resolved, possibly with the help of both Nvidia’s compute and Tesla’s own Dojo supercomputer.

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