Why Cruise is Making its Own Chips, and a Lot More Besides

upstart writes:

The supply chain it needs simply doesn't exist, but that could work to GM's advantage:

Cruise never planned to make its own silicon. But in the quest to commercialize robotaxis - and make money doing it - those never planned pursuits can suddenly seem a lot more appealing.

Cruise realized that the price of chips from suppliers was too high, the parts were too big and the reliability of the third-party technology just wasn't there, Carl Jenkins, Cruise's vice president of hardware, told TechCrunch during a tour of the company's hardware lab last month.

Amid a hiring spree that began in 2019 and continued into 2020, Cruise doubled down on its own hardware, including its own board and sensors. The investment has helped the company develop smaller, lower cost hardware for its vehicles. It has also resulted in its first production board the C5, which is powering the current generation of autonomous Chevy Bolts.

When the company's purpose-built Origin robotaxi starts hitting the streets in 2023, it will be outfitted with the C6 board. That board will eventually be replaced with the C7 which will have Cruise's Dune chip. Dune will process all of the sensor data for the system, according to Cruise.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.