Nvidia To Provide Chinese EV Startups With Its ‘Xavier’ AI Platform

Chip maker Nvidia will supply its AI platform, named Xavier, to a selection of Chinese electric vehicle startups, Reuters reports.

While speaking at an event in the Chinese city of Suzhou, Nvidia chief executive Hensen Huang said Xpeng, Singulator and SF Motors will use the company’s artificial intelligence driving chip as its computing platform to develop hardware for autonomous driving.

In a statement issues shortly after the announcement, Xpeng said that it plans on rolling out level 3 intelligent driving features in its range of vehicles starting in 2020. These features will use software and hardware develop with Nvidia and Huizhou Desay SV Automotive.

Similarly, Singulato with develop level 3 autonomous driving systems through the Xavier platform and eventually update its systems to offer level 4 autonomy. SF Motors will use Xavier to develop its next-generation autonomous platform and intends on introducing its first electric crossover in 2019.

In recent years, Nvidia has established itself as one of the technology industry’s leaders in autonomous driving. While it doesn’t have a huge fleet of prototypes, like Waymo and others, it has been chosen by a selection of car manufacturers to develop future self-driving features.

For example, Volkswagen and Nvidia announced at the start of this year that the German marque’s future models will utilize Nvidia’s artificial intelligence systems. Not only will these systems allow for better autonomous driving, but they will also offer features like facial recognition to unlock a car, driver alerts for bicycles, and gesture recognition for various onboard systems.

In October, Nvidia also revealed that its platform will be incorporated in future Volvo models based on the automaker’s Scalable Product Architecture 2 (SPA2).