American automaker and energy solutions company Tesla does not want to jump the bandwagon of manufacturers who are outsourcing chip manufacturing for their self-driving cars. Unlike most other companies in the field, Tesla is reportedly working with Samsung for its own, personalized chip.
According to a report by Reuters, Samsung Electronics will supply the semiconductors for Tesla’s own system-on-chips. According to sources, the project would take about three years to complete. However, Tesla has not divulged any information on the matter as of now.
It is not that the company has not relied on outside companies for their technology. It had earlier signed deals with a variety of supplier in the past. It started out its Autopilot program with an Israeli technology company Mobileye, although things didn’t work out and the companies parted ways earlier this year. The automaker is currently deploying Nvidia’s Drive PX 2 system for its latest Autopilot system.
This step of creating its own personalized setup would give the company a much stronger hold over its hardware. According to Electrek, the Elon Musk hired a number of former executives from semiconductor manufacturers Advanced Micro Devices and Chip architects earlier this year.
Earlier in October, Tesla announced that all the cars that it will now manufacture would possess the hardware necessary for complete Level 5 autonomy.
The company had also announced that all of its future cars would be enabled with sensors, cameras and radar. While many of these functions will remain disabled for the time being, Tesla will have the option of enabling one or more of these functions to give its cars semi or full autonomy. The company already has a bunch of active systems in many of its earlier iterations, such as adaptive cruise control and autonomous emergency braking.
Meanwhile, there has been no official word from either Samsung or Tesla as of now.
