GoKawiilis transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Nvidia added two leading Chinese automakers, BYD and Geely, to its robotaxi program, as the chipmaker seeks to put its stamp on the growing autonomous vehicle market worldwide.
At its GTC conference today, Nvidia announced that BYD and Geely, as well as Isuzu and Nissan, would use the chipmaker’s Drive Hyperion platform, which combines the chips, computers, sensors, and software needed for for the development of Level 4 autonomous vehicles.
BYD currently uses Nvidia’s chips in its manually driven cars, and now, under this expanded agreement, it will use the company’s Hyperion platform to build next-generation Level 4 vehicles. Geely, meanwhile, is said to be using Nvidia’s Thor chips in its new Zeekr vehicles. Geely also supplies Zeekr vehicles to Waymo for its US-based robotaxi service. And Waymo also is using Nvidia’s products, according to Ali Kani, VP and general manager of the automotive team at Nvidia, in a briefing with reporters. “Waymo is using us in the car and the cloud,“ Kani said.
The news that Nvidia is supplying chips and software to two of China’s top automakers comes amid ongoing tensions between the US and China over trade and tariffs. The company’s chips, especially the ones used in data centers to train AI models, have been the subject of intense negotiations between the two countries, with the Trump administration recently approving the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips to Chinese companies.
China clearly has a huge lead over the US in electric vehicle production, but the two countries are more evenly matched in the robotaxi field. Baidu, for example, is operating commercial robotaxis in over a dozen Chinese cities. (Waymo has approximately 3,000 vehicles operating commercially in 10 US cities.)
Nvidia’s deal with BYD and Geely could vastly accelerate those companies’ development of autonomous vehicles, increasing China’s chances of overtaking the US. Some lawmakers in Congress have pushed to pass long-stalled autonomous vehicle legislation, largely on the premise of maintaining a technological lead over China.
Nvidia is seeking to raise its profile as a self-driving leader. But while the company has long supplied major automakers with chips and software for driver-assist systems, its automotive business is still relatively tiny compared to the billions it rakes in from AI. Its third quarter revenues in 2025 were $51.2 billion, but its automotive division only made $592 million, or 1.2 percent of the total haul.
But Nvidia isn’t just supplying its AV technology to Chinese companies. It also will sell its Hyperion platform to Nissan, which is also using robotaxi software developed by Wayve. And it is working with Isuzu and Tier IV to design Level 4 buses using its next-gen Drive AGX Thor-based system-on-a-chip.
... continue reading