GM Cruise will produce its own chips for self-driving cars

Cruise will produce its own chips for self-driving cars. This is done in order to reduce costs and no longer depend on third parties. Cruise Origin is on the horizon.

GM’s Cruise division doesn’t want to depend on third-party makers for the chips that power its self-driving cars, so it will manufacture them in-house. Carl Jenkins, vice president of hardware engineering, told Reuters that the main reason for the move is the cost that other companies’ chips currently carry.

Cruise will produce its own chips for autonomous vehicles

“Two years ago, we were shelling out a lot of money for a GPU from a very well-known manufacturer,” Carl Jenkins told the newspaper, referring, of course, to NVIDIA. He clarified that Cruise was unable to negotiate as it did not yet produce self-driving cars in large volumes. Its technology is still in its experimental stages, and while it recently became the first company to be allowed to charge for self-driving trips, its operations remain limited. By making its own chips, Cruise, like Tesla, Apple and Volkswagen before it, is taking its future into its own hands.

This is done in order to reduce costs and no longer depend on third parties.

Carl Jenkins said that by this point, Cruise had already developed four chips, starting with Horta, which was conceived and intended to be the main brain of vehicles. Dune will be responsible for processing sensor data, while another chip will manage the information collected by the radar. The other chip will be announced later. These components will be found in Cruise Origin, an autonomous electric shuttle that the brand announced in 2020. Cruise Origin will not have a steering wheel or pedals and will offer four seats facing each other. It should be used as a shared vehicle, constantly on the road, delivering passengers to their destination.

Cruise Origin looms on the horizon

Company executives haven’t said how much they’re spending on developing their chips, but they seem confident they’ll be able to recoup their investment once Cruise begins mass production. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the company’s own chips will help Origin “reach this very important cost point”by 2025, and that they are working to make buying fully autonomous vehicles for personal use viable. It’s unclear if this means Cruise intends to sell its Origin to private individuals, but GM chief Mary Barra announced at this year’s CES that the manufacturer wants to sell personal self-driving cars around 2025.

By removing the steering wheel, rearview mirror, pedals and more, we got something simple: space. pic.twitter.com/K3tS0QxuSC

— Cruise (@Cruise) January 22, 2020