Om Malik at Crazy Stupid Tech, March 16:
Sometimes, a car is not just a car.
Take the new Volvo ES90, as an example.
In its press release, Volvo touts computing power of 508 trillion operations per second (TOPS), thanks to dual NVIDIA Orin chips. The ES90 features lidar technology, five radars, seven cameras, and 12 ultrasonic sensors. Its neural network can process 200 million parameters. The electric vehicle’s range matches Tesla’s top models. This isn’t just a car — it’s more of a supercomputer on wheels.
Goodbye Torque. Hello TeraFLOPS!
The future of cars is code, not chrome. Volvo’s ES90 is the latest example of computing’s conquest of the automotive industry. Industry insiders might shrug and say “so what.” But Volvo’s announcement serves as a stark reminder: While Tesla may appear to dominate the electric vehicle market, it’s facing intense competition. Chinese automakers aren’t just coming – they’ve already arrived.
Volvo may be Swedish in name and heritage, but that’s where it ends. The automaker is a subsidiary of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a Chinese multinational automotive company. Geely purchased Volvo Cars from Ford Motor Co. in 2010 for $1.8 billion. The Chinese company also owns Polestar and holds minority stakes in Lotus and Aston Martin. Perhaps most significantly, Geely stands as China’s second-largest battery electric vehicle seller, trailing only its domestic rival BYD.
While Tesla remains the largest electric vehicle company by total sales and market capitalization, its dominance faces mounting pressure from Chinese automakers. In 2023, Tesla delivered 1.8 million cars, while BYD delivered 1.57 million. In 2024, Tesla delivered 1.79 million electric vehicles, while BYD sold 1.76 million. BYD is nipping on its heels, and poised to take a lead.
However, these numbers don’t tell the complete story. BYD reported higher revenues in the third quarter of 2024 and delivered more fully electric vehicles than Tesla in the fourth quarter. According to China Passenger Car Association data released March 4, Tesla’s wholesale sales in the Chinese market fell 49% in February compared to the same period last year, reaching 30,688 units. Even though Chinese data is notoriously unreliable, you can hear the bad news bears grumbling.
BYD, Geely, and Xiaomi, the latter until recently known only as a smartphone maker, are increasingly dominating global electric vehicle sales. This shift poses challenges not only for Western automakers but also for Silicon Valley, particularly as technology evolves beyond personal computers and phones. The automotive sector has become the spearhead threatening American technological dominance and its ability to shape the industry’s future.
China is about 40% of all vehicle manufacturing already, but it has the capacity to produce at least another 10 million vehicles a year, says Nathaniel Bullard, who publishes an annual report on clean technology. Even Japan at its peak was nowhere close to that. China’s focus is no longer on fossil fuel cars -- it is focused on battery electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. “China has reset the global auto market full stop, not just electric vehicles,” Bullard said. “We’ve never seen a nation control this much of global auto manufacturing.”
What works for Chinese auto-industry is that Chinese manufacturers benefit from both a robust supplier network and vertically integrated companies like BYD, which, similar to Tesla, controls much of its production process. “The implications are big for Europe and profound for Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world,” Bullard said. “European, U.S. and Japanese automakers are already losing their share in China proper and are also seeing China compete with them elsewhere.”....
....MUCH MORE
