Recently, ideal automobile established a new company, whose business scope includes chip design, called Sichuan ideal Smart Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as ideal smart). This is likely to mean that the ideal car may be laying out car chip design, and using self-developed chips on its models in the future .
▲ ideal automobile establishes a new company
This is also another auto enterprise with self-developed chips in the era of intelligent automobile in which chips have become the core components of automobiles.
After the news was released, chedongxi also contacted the ideal car, and the other party did not disclose more information.
According to the information, ideal smart is wholly owned by leading idea HK Limited, an affiliate of ideal automobile , and the legal representative of the company is George Li with a registered capital of 100 million yuan.
In fact, as early as 2020, chedongxi asked Wang Kai, then CTO of the ideal car, whether it would develop its own chip. At that time, Wang Kai's answer was that whether the self-developed chip was determined by the data the final say, not by the brain.
Then, by 2022, the intelligent demand of automobile market and users has changed considerably compared with 2020. At this moment, will it be the best time for the ideal car to start self-development of chips?
01. The new company can do chip design and is registered in Mianyang
The registration address of ideal smart action is in high tech Zone, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, and the registration date is April 29 this year. At present, there are only two key personnel, namely George Li, the legal representative of the company, and Feng Weili, the supervisor.
▲ ideal smart enterprise relationship chart
Among them, George Li also served as the general manager of Faurecia (Changshu) Auto Parts Co., Ltd., while Feng Weili served as a supervisor in several ideal auto related companies.
The business scope of ideal smart is very noteworthy, including integrated circuit chip design and services. Other business scope also includes road motor vehicle production, auto parts and accessories Manufacturing, sales of electric accessories of new energy vehicles, sales of whole vehicles of new energy vehicles, etc.
*Ideal smart is wholly owned by leading idea HK Limited *, which is registered in Hong Kong and has 122 member enterprises, all of which are ideal automobile related companies. Li Xiang and Shen Yanan also work in the company.
This is likely to mean that ideal has begun to develop auto chips.
However, from the perspective of the company's organizational structure, there is no specific layout of self-developed chips at present, because neither the legal representative nor the supervisor is engaged in the research and development of the chip industry. Whether the ideal car has self-developed chips and the progress of self-developed chips may not be announced until some time.
02. The most ideal auto driving mode for enterprises
In fact, with the rapid development of automotive intelligence and chips becoming the core components of intelligent vehicles, the ideal vehicle is not the first vehicle enterprise to layout self-developed chips.
As early as 2019, Tesla installed the self-developed autopilot chip into model 3, gave up using Mobileye and NVIDIA chips, and turned on the full self-developed autopilot.
▲ Tesla autopilot computer
It is precisely because the self-developed chip has considerable advantages that Tesla took the lead in realizing navigation assisted driving, traffic light recognition and other functions in the industry, and also carried out urban L2 automatic driving in North America. Even by the way, millimeter wave radar has been cancelled and switched to pure visual perception.
*In 2020, some media reported that Weilai automobile was planning to develop its own autopilot chip, which was personally promoted by founder Li Bin *. At that time, Weilai had a clear intention to develop its own chip. At the same time, last year, Weilai also found Hu Chengchen, who once served as the director of Xilinx Asia Pacific Laboratory. He has rich experience in chip front-end design.
*In 2021, core engine technology, jointly established by Yikatong invested by Geely Automobile and anmou China, also released a 7Nm car machine chip - longying No. 1 *. This chip will be mass produced and put on the car this year. The first car is Geely's model.
▲ longying 1 chip
In fact, whether independent brands or overseas brands, auto enterprises' self-developed chips have become a key option for intelligent layout. Even for some auto enterprises, self-developed chips are the only way to realize intelligent functions.
According to this analysis, it is actually not uncommon for ideal automobile to establish a chip company, and even the ideal is to join a new player in the self-developed chip team of automobile enterprises.
In February this year, Beijing chehejia Technology Co., Ltd. and Hunan San'an Semiconductor Co., Ltd. established a joint venture. Among them, Hunan San'an semiconductor has a layout in the SiC field and has its own wafer production line.
This is the first step in the ideal automobile chip layout.
So, today, ideal automobile sets up a company whose business scope includes chip design. What chips will it make?
Che Dongxi believes that SiC chip has a certain possibility, and it can also make automatic driving chip .
In recent years, SiC has a high popularity in the chip industry. Tesla, BYD and other models have applied SiC modules in the car. Therefore, self-developed SiC chip may be one of the ideal layouts.
In addition, according to the current technical layout, the ideal car has already laid out the self-developed automatic driving algorithm, but the 2020 ideal one, 2021 ideal one and L9 ideal cars are equipped with automatic driving chips from three different suppliers, namely Mobileye, horizon and NVIDIA.
Obviously, the ideal car has always wanted to have a "better" automatic driving chip installed in the new car.
In addition, the self-developed autopilot algorithm, which has been laid out for a long time, has a higher possibility for the self-developed autopilot chip of the ideal vehicle.