u/CDpov

Waymo charging lot with generators at the former HQ of the Austin American-Statesman at 305 S. Congress Ave.

Nvidia has a similar dominance of AI hardware that Intel had in the CPUs of the PC era

• The AV problem for Nvidia is the big AV companies like Waymo, Tesla, Zoox, Mobileye all own their own technology stack instead of using the Nvidia self-driving stack
• None of these frontier AV companies have substantially used Nvidia chips
• The frontier AV companies utilize a co-design loop of sensors, compute, and software that are all designed together
  • The chips shape the models, the models shape the chip, the sensors constrain both
  • Designing all three together, quickly learning and deploying improvements in each component is the key to success. Co-design permits a faster and more efficient, thus cheaper system than an off-the-shelf system like Nvidia
• Waymo has apparently always used its own in-house stack, because the hardware-software design loop was too important to leave to an outside supplier
• Cruise head of hardware once said that Nvidia's pricing was unsustainable, so they developed their own chips.
• Aurora is the only frontier American AV company that uses the Nvidia chips
  • Aurora has a different strategy because they will deploy their Aurora Driver across OEM trucks it doesn't control and can't customize
• Aurora has committed to DRIVE Thor, as have BYD, Hyper, XPENG, Nuro, Waabi, WeRide, and others

Nvidia DRIVE Orin:

• an ASIL-D certified ADAS SoC, optimized for inference in a car, with a GPU, inference accelerator, and image signal processor to parse sensor output in real time
• 254 TOPS
• a moat for Nvidia is the ASIL-D certification, required for automotive safety-critical systems in the U.S.
• Nvidia DRIVE Sim: a simulation environment for autonomous systems.
• Nvidia Drive OS: the software layer for DRIVE Orin
• Nvidia Hyperion: a reference architecture to help auto companies on how to build a production system around Orin
• Between 2022 and 2025 DRIVE Orin became the dominant ADAS AI chip in China, with over ten Chinese OEMs shipping consumer vehicle using Orin
• BYD shipped over one million vehicle with Orin by 2025
• NIO, XPeng, Li Auto, Zeekr, Xiaomi all use Orin
• NIO has spent over $140 million and four years to develop its own chip, and now saves $1420 per vehicle, with more control over its supply
  • Chinese OEM are increasingly moving away from Nvidia chips, pushed by the Chinese government

Author's Conclusion:

• NVIDIA seems safe with DRIVE Thor, for so long as no Western OEM reaches the volume threshold that would make going in-house compelling.
• Nvidia is a supplier of silicon infrastructure to companies that don't need to own the whole stack, mostly for ADAS.
• Evidence suggests that Nvidia can't become the foundational platform for full-autonomy companies.

Not mentioned in the article:

• Mercedes is using Nvidia chips and the Alpamayo models for their AV future.
• Companies using Thor include: May Mobility, Wayve, Waabi, WeRide, Nissan, Hyundai, Geely, Lucid, and Uber has a partnership with Nvidia
• Rivian used Orin Drive in the R1 but is developing its own RAP1 chips in the R2.