Mercedes Benz

Elon Musk's Tesla is developing its own self-driving chip rather than using someone else's, such as Nvidia's Drive Xavier, at left. Bombshells are a common occurrence in Tesla's quarterly analyst calls, and the latest was no exception. As soon as CEO Elon Musk introduced the call, he turned the microphone over to members of his Autopilot team who announced that Tesla had spent three years developing a custom "neural network accelerator" chip that is now nearly ready to power its upcoming autonomous hardware suite. According to Pete Bannon, Tesla's director of Autopilot hardware engineering, Tesla already has drop-in chip replacements for the Model S, X, and 3. "The chips are up and working," he says. "All have been driven in the field." If you are not neck-deep in the world of autonomous vehicle chip design, this may not seem like a big deal. But for people in the know, such as executives at chip makers Nvidia and Intel, Tesla's an...

Elon Musk's Tesla is developing its own self-driving chip rather than using someone else's, such as Nvidia's Drive Xavier, at left. Bombshells are a common occurrence in Tesla's quarterly analyst calls, and the latest was no exception. As soon as CEO Elon Musk introduced the call, he turned the microphone over to members of his Autopilot team who announced that Tesla had spent three years developing a custom "neural network accelerator" chip that is now nearly ready to power its upcoming autonomous hardware suite. According to Pete Bannon, Tesla's director of Autopilot hardware engineering, Tesla already has drop-in chip replacements for the Model S, X, and 3. "The chips are up and working," he says. "All have been driven in the field." If you are not neck-deep in the world of autonomous vehicle chip design, this may not seem like a big deal. But for people in the know, such as executives at chip makers Nvidia and Intel, Tesla's an...