NVIDIA Vs. Qualcomm And Autonomous Cars
QUALCOMM
By Financial News
On Dec 11, 2021
This month, both NVIDIA and Qualcomm had major media and analyst events. NVIDIA did its event virtually, while Qualcomm hosted its event in Hawaii, which was also streamed live. Both companies are aggressively chasing opportunities for autonomous cars, but failing to offer equivalent solutions. And both companies have unique advantages that are not mutually exclusive, suggesting that the best implementation could be a combination of the two companies’ offerings, not an exclusive use of either.
Let’s compare the work of Qualcomm and NVIDIA to define the future of autonomous cars and ultimately autonomous robots.
NVIDIA: the one-stop shop
What defines NVIDIA is the smooth approach to this opportunity. Not only does it have both training and inference solutions for robotic autonomy, but NVIDIA has also invested heavily in simulation, putting it currently in the lead with robotics — a claim currently being emphasized at BMW’s highly automated factory. As an early adopter of the metaverse with its own metaverse toolset under the Omniverse brand, NVIDIA’s autonomous car solution is especially attractive to smaller car companies that lack the resources to develop their own proprietary program. The less a company knows about self-driving cars, the more attractive NVIDIA’s solution is because it can turn novices into experts.
Qualcomm: The DIY Approach
Qualcomm’s approach is much less comprehensive and has not yet embraced robotics as fully as NVIDIA. However, Qualcomm knows how to do the basics, is an expert at networking and can better integrate smartphones into their solution (all areas where auto companies aren’t that good at). In addition, the implementation is more on the inference than the training side. This makes Qualcomm much more attractive to larger companies like GM, which currently has the best autonomous system on the road on the market, and ironically, BMW, which has a similar scale.
It’s interesting to note that on the smartphone side where Qualcomm is best known, Qualcomm is more of a soup-to-nuts company, but lacks both the depth and breadth of NVIDIA’s offerings. This narrow approach is more attractive to larger auto companies that want stronger differentiators and own more of their solution. While NVIDIA stands out in terms of the comprehensiveness of its solution, Qualcomm stands out in terms of its smartphone experience, which could be an interesting differentiator as car companies move to smartphones as keys and smartphones and cars integrate more intimately with third-party cloud services.
A possible mixed solution
BMW’s use of Qualcomm in cars and NVIDIA in factories highlights the unique advantages that both companies have. BMW knows little about robotics and therefore needs NVIDIA’s help to create a comprehensive solution, but it knows a lot about cars, which makes Qualcomm’s limited offerings more appealing because it doesn’t make up for what BMW already has. I doubt BMW will be alone with this distinction, as every car company experiences both parts and labor shortages, forcing a much higher level of factory automation.
Both companies can address the growing need for enhanced in-car entertainment, but Qualcomm can better integrate smartphones and cars, while NVIDIA should be better at finding and filling technology gaps through simulation.
And the use of one company, as BMW emphasized, does not preclude the use of another, highlighting the possibility that a combination of technologies can provide the driver with the best overall experience until this technology reaches full maturity in the 2030s.
Wrapping Up
In the early stages of a market there is little focus on competition because the market is far from being saturated. At this stage, the best approach is to leverage as many of the leading vendors as possible and allow flexibility between solutions as those solutions mature because you want to keep your options open if possible so that the solutions can mature. In addition, there may be elements of the NVIDIA solution, such as simulation, which you will need, and elements of the Qualcomm solution, such as connectivity and smartphone integration, which you will also need, making the mixed approach the best until we have more parity between the two offers. Vendors are more likely to collaborate than compete at this stage, as they must collectively create a market before they can compete for the outcome.
My concern for this segment is that the demand for autonomous driving is nowhere near where it should be and too many drivers still mistrust the technology. This distrust is the result of a combination of the much-discussed Tesla Autopilot crashes and the limitations of technology currently on the market. If the industry doesn’t solve the demand problem, it doesn’t really matter if NVIDIA or Qualcomm offers a better solution, because few people will want to. And this problem is why Qualcomm, NVIDIA and even Intel are likely to collaborate more than compete in the near term.
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