BYD will equip vehicles with the onboard "4090," while NVIDIA continues to dominate the autonomous driving arena.

Car News Weekly

Smart driving-related news broadcast

▶ Introduction

Hot Topic This Issue:

New Industry Regulations

1. Shanghai's Jiading District aims to reach an intelligent and connected automotive industry scale of 300 billion yuan.

Factory Updates

1. Third week of March passenger vehicle sales

2. Tesla FSD: Beta 11.3.1 Road Test Adds New Features with Visual Enhancements

3. BYD: Partners with NVIDIA; future new vehicles will feature the DRIVE Orin chip.

Industry Chain Information

1. NVIDIA: Lenovo Becomes Thor's New Autonomous Driving Partner

This issue's keywords: Industry New Regulations, Automaker Updates, Autonomous Driving

PART.1 Industry New Regulations

1. Shanghai's Jiading District aims to reach an intelligent and connected automotive industry scale of 300 billion yuan.

Recently, Jiading District in Shanghai released the "Action Plan for Building a Global Innovation Hub for Intelligent Connected Vehicles (2023-2025)." The plan outlines that by 2025, Jiading aims to develop 20 globally competitive complete intelligent connected vehicle models, independently create 20 core automotive chips, and achieve mass production of 20 software solutions tailored for autonomous driving. By 2025, Jiading strives to grow its intelligent connected vehicle-related industry to a scale of 300 billion yuan.

  PART.2 Factory Updates

1. Week 2 of March: Passenger Vehicle Sales

In the third week of March (March 13 to March 19), automobile sales reached 316,000 units, representing a 4.3% year-on-year increase and an approximate 1-percentage-point rise compared to the previous week. As of the third week of March 2023, cumulative auto market sales totaled 3.368 million units, still showing a year-on-year decline of more than 20% compared to the same period last year.

In the third week of March 2023, new energy vehicle sales reached 114,000 units, representing a month-on-month increase of 4.88% and a year-on-year rise of 16.4%. Meanwhile, cumulative sales grew by 17.7% compared to the same period last year—though this growth rate was 1 percentage point lower than the previous period's increase.

In the third week of March 2023, sales of pure electric vehicles reached 79,000 units for the week, down 2.2% year-on-year but up 0.7% from the previous week; plug-in hybrid models sold 26,500 units, while range-extended electric vehicles accounted for 8,000 units.

2. Tesla FSD: Beta 11.3.1 road tests add new features with visual enhancements

According to foreign media reports, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated on Twitter that the latest Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta 11.3.1 is "a major transformative improvement, but further testing is still needed before its official launch."

FSD Beta 11.3.1 adds and removes numerous options, along with introducing new visual effects. In this test, the vehicle's driving path is displayed as a thicker line, representing both the space the car currently occupies and the area it will soon occupy. Additionally, Tesla has rolled out new shortcuts for select Autopilot features.

With the introduction of FSD Beta for highway driving, Tesla has now removed the "Autopilot Navigation (NoA)" feature. NoA is Tesla's term for the system that executes lane changes to follow a guided driving route. However, with the launch of FSD Beta v11, this option has become redundant and has since been eliminated through this update. If drivers switch to "Autosteer" in the "Autopilot" menu, "Autopilot Navigation" will still remain available.

3. BYD: Partners with NVIDIA; future new vehicles will feature the DRIVE Orin chip.  

Recently, Car Connectivity learned that BYD has partnered with NVIDIA to equip its upcoming new vehicles with the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin series of chips, further enhancing the intelligent features and advanced driver-assistance capabilities of BYD’s automotive lineup, and delivering a more seamless and exceptional driving experience to consumers.

NVIDIA DRIVE Orin is a high-performance autonomous and intelligent driving processor that will deliver even more powerful computing capabilities to BYD’s next-generation Dynasty and Ocean series models. Powered by the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin in-vehicle computing platform—specifically designed for software-defined vehicles—the system enables continuous upgrades of autonomous driving features throughout the vehicle’s entire lifecycle via over-the-air (OTA) software updates.

BYD Auto has integrated the NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion platform, enabling intelligent driving and smart parking features in its vehicles. Powered by advanced deep learning and computer vision technologies, this platform allows cars to perform functions such as automatic cruise control and autonomous parking. This move will further elevate BYD's level of automotive intelligence, helping the company meet consumers' growing demand for cutting-edge, driverless capabilities.

  PART 3. Industry Chain Information

1. NVIDIA: Lenovo Becomes Thor's New Autonomous Driving Partner

At NVIDIA's GTC AI Developer Conference on the evening of March 21, NVIDIA dropped a "nuclear bomb" on the chip manufacturing industry: the cuLitho computational lithography library can accelerate computational lithography by more than 40 times, making 2nm and even more advanced process technologies feasible.

According to NVIDIA's disclosure, Lenovo has announced it has become the new Tier 1 supplier of autonomous driving domain controllers (ADCs). The high-end ADC product, powered by NVIDIA DRIVE Thor, will begin mass production in 2025.

As of now, Thor has publicly announced two partner clients: Zeekr and Lenovo. Lenovo stated that the Vehicle Computing Lab at Lenovo Research is actively exploring core technologies in areas such as intelligent cockpits, autonomous driving, and central computing platforms. The lab is committed to integrating IT with automotive electronics, thereby driving the advancement of smart and new-energy vehicles—and ultimately carving out a unique niche for itself in the future automotive computing landscape.

Related news