Chinese EV manufacturer Xpeng is reportedly working to integrate its self-developed AI chip into certain car models that Volkswagen (VW) plans to launch in China next year.
Xpeng expects that in addition to Volkswagen, other automotive companies will also become customers for these advanced Turing chips designed for autonomous driving, reported The Financial Times.
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Xpeng chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng said: “Developing chips is fundamentally a long-term commitment, as Xpeng envisions doing a lot of things across cars, aircraft and robotics. We need a type of chip that can support these platforms and also power our [AI] large language model.”
The company is also engaged in discussions to provide chips to additional car manufacturers. “We are seeking long-term partners,” Xiaopeng stated.
A VW spokesperson in China was quoted by the financial daily as saying: “As announced, Volkswagen and Xpeng are jointly developing two Volkswagen brand cars for the mid-class segment. Both parties contribute their respective strength. These cars will be launched next year.”
Xpeng’s latest product highlights China’s chip design efforts, part of a long-standing goal to lessen reliance on foreign semiconductors.
In the automotive industry, there is a growing demand for high-end AI chips to support the development and operation of advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving systems.
In 2023, the German company invested $700m for a 5% stake in Xpeng, as part of a strategic initiative to adapt to the global shift towards EVs.
This partnership has seen Volkswagen engineers collaborating with Xpeng at their facilities in Hefei and Guangzhou to enhance Volkswagen’s smart-driving capabilities.
Xpeng is reportedly investing approximately about $700m annually in the development of AI-related technologies, which constitutes about half of the company’s total research and development budget.
This investment has enabled Xpeng to become the “first Chinese automaker” to introduce autopilot features for expressways and a fully voice-controlled smart cabin system, stated Xiaopeng.
The advanced chips are claimed to have a computing power of 2,200 tera-operations per second (TOPS), which is based on how many trillion operations a processor can execute in one second. In comparison, vehicles commonly available in the Chinese market typically range from 80 to 700 TOPS.
While referring to the processor made by Nvidia, Xiaopeng said at a launch event for enabled Xpeng G7 car: “The effective computing power of the Turing AI chip is three times greater than that of the leading autonomous driving chip, Orin-X.”
Xpeng plans to expand its chip business to recover the significant investments it has made in recent years.
In May, Xpeng partnered with European EV charging network provider Plugsurfing to offer its users access to more than 940,000 charging points across 27 countries.
