With his own company transitioning from a chip maker to an “AI firm”, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang went on record saying some very positive things about Tesla’s Autopilot system.
The Nvidia boss stated that the automaker “sent a shock wave through the automotive industry” since introducing the necessary hardware for fully autonomous driving.
Huang went on to add that the system is “basically five years ahead. Anybody who’s talking about 2021… that’s just a non-starter anymore. And I think that’s probably the most significant bit in the automotive industry. I just don’t – anybody who is talking about autonomous capabilities in 2020 and 2021 is at the moment re-evaluating in a very significant way.”
According to Huang, autonomous driving is not a “detection problem” but an “AI problem”, which he thinks will be solved as early as next year, mainly thanks to Nvidia’s Drive PX 2 supercomputer.
When asked why Tesla decided to use his company’s technology for their second generation Autopilot instead of Mobileye’s, Huang stated that Nvidia’s GPU platform is better and more efficient for AI, and that it’s scalable with OTA updates for building an autonomous fleet service.
According to Electrek, if Tesla does manage to offer fully autonomous driving in 2017 thanks to the Drive PX 2, it’s possible that the rest of the auto industry would also turn to Nvidia’s tech solutions.