Volkswagen in Works of Designing Own Computer Chips for Autonomous Vehicles, Following Tesla and Apple’s Footsteps?

Following a recent interview published by a German publication Handelsblatt, Chief Executive Officer of Volkswagen Group Herbert Deiss confirmed the company’s plans to design and develop its own high-powered chips for autonomous vehicles along with the required software.

As a recap, Volkswagen revealed its first fully autonomous vehicle, the ID.Buzz electric van which made a landmark alongside the ID.4 EV. Now, VW’s latest bold move is to design their own high-powered chips for autonomous vehicles, along with the required software. 

"To achieve optimal performance in light of the high demands that exist for cars, software and hardware have to come out of one hand," said Diess. 

Volkswagen’s in-house software development company, Cariad (formerly known as Car.Software) will design the chips. The company is in plans of investing over 7 billions euros (approximately RM35 billion) in the division by 2025. 

"Apple and Tesla have higher competence in terms of how semiconductors are defined," Diess said. While this plan would not give Volkswagen an edge in terms of supply, it is definitely seen as a response to Tesla as the U.S company was able to develop new features faster thanks to their ability to integrate custom designed chips. 

Volkswagen only intends to design its computer chips, with production to be outsourced to an existing supplier. This is like Tesla, which outsources its chips production to Samsung. The company also wants to own patents when possible.