Xpeng Says Its New Self-Driving Chip Is 3x More Powerful Than Nvidia's, Will Power VW Cars

Xpeng XPEV has developed chips for autonomous driving with Volkswagen VWAGY and other auto rivals as potential customers.

The Chinese EV maker said that its chips could beat that of Nvidia Corp. NVDA.

He Xiaopeng, Xpeng’s co-founder and CEO, told the Financial Times during a launch event for the G7 car on Wednesday that the company was integrating its Turing artificial intelligence chip into select Volkswagen car models it planned to launch in China in 2025.

Also Read: Tesla’s Chinese Rivals See Huge April Growth, XPeng Surges 273% In Deliveries

Xiaopeng said the Turing AI chip’s computing power is three times greater than that of Nvidia’s autonomous driving chip, Orin-X.

Xiaopeng said the company aimed to develop a chip capable of supporting cars, aircraft, and robotics and power its AI model. The company also explored supplying chips to other car makers.

Global carmakers have struggled to develop in-house chips to reduce dependence on technology companies, with the 2020 pandemic further deteriorating the chip crisis. Therefore, in 2023, Volkswagen acquired a 5% stake in Xpeng for $700 million.

Volkswagen engineers collaborated with Xpeng in their respective plants in Hefei and Guangzhou to boost the German group’s smart-driving expertise.

Xpeng committed 5 billion Chinese yuan ($700 million) annually to developing AI-related technologies, nearly 50% of its total research and development spending.

Xpeng stock surged over 173% in the last 12 months. The company debuted the latest all-electric G7 SUV in China, bagging over 10,000 pre-orders in under 46 minutes, pitting it against Tesla Inc.’s TSLA cheapest vehicle in China, the Model 3.

Price Action: XPEV stock is trading lower by 2.55% to $19.91 premarket at last check Thursday.

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