Foxconn, the world's largest tech manufacturer, said earlier in the year that it is striving to expand into the electric vehicle market. The company in March said it is targeting a 5% share of the global EV market by 2025, as a prelude to producing half of the world's EVs.
Foxconn announced a new partnership with Nvidia in January to help make its EV efforts a reality.
Related: Cathie Wood says one prominent tech stock is a stronger long-term bet than Nvidia
Speaking at the fourth annual Hon Hai Tech Day in Taiwan Oct. 18, Nvidia (NVDA) -) CEO Jensen Huang revealed the latest in the chipmaker's ongoing work with Foxconn to "develop the next wave of intelligent electric vehicle platforms" for the global market.
Foxconn, Nvidia said, will be leveraging Nvidia's suite of drive solutions — specifically, Drive Hyperion 9 — to develop a "highly automated and autonomous" platform for its next-generation EVs. This effort takes advantage of Nvidia's artificially intelligent Orin computer chip, and when available, Nvidia's Thor chip, which the company said is expected to deliver 2,000 teraflops of computing power designed to "enable functionally safe and secure intelligent driving."
The Hyperion 9 platform, which takes advantage of cameras, lidar and ultrasonic sensors, according to Nvidia, will allow for Level Three urban and Level Four highway autonomous driving use cases.
Related: What's stopping Tesla from achieving Level 3 self-driving
Tesla's (TSLA) -) self-driving efforts, on the other hand, remain at a Level Two designation, requiring the hands-on, eyes-on attention of the driver. For the company to break into Level Three autonomy, Tesla's systems would need an ingrained backup. The system is currently fueled primarily by a series of cameras, acting as the "eyes" of the car.
In lacking a technological backup such as a lidar sensor, the backup sensor in a Tesla running FSD, if the main technology fails, is its human driver, a reality that requires driver attention and prevents full autonomy.
Nvidia charmed Wall Street earlier in the year when it reported record earnings and leaped beyond a $1 trillion market cap. The chipmaker has been equated to the picks and shovels in the gold rush that is AI.
Nvidia's stock is up more than 190% for the year.
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