and are already using Nvidia DRIVE Orin chips in their smart driving systems, with Nio even having its third-generation battery swap stations equipped with two of the chips.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

(OTCMKTS: BYDDY) will use Nvidia's DRIVE Orin chips in its next-generation models, making it the latest Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) maker to use the US chip giant's smart-driving chips.

Nvidia is enhancing its partnership with BYD, which will use the DRIVE Orin system-on-chip (SoC) across the multiple models of its next-generation Dynasty and Ocean series vehicles, according to a press release from the US chip giant yesterday.

Nvidia and BYD share the belief that future cars will be programmable, evolving from being based on many embedded controllers to high-performance centralized computers -- with functionalities delivered and enhanced through software updates over the life of the car, the release said.

Nvidia's press release provided no further details on BYD's plans to use the DRIVE Orin chips. BYD's product matrix includes the Dynasty and Ocean series, with dozens of models.

Several Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers are already using Nvidia's DRIVE Orin chips to power the vehicles' assisted driving systems.

All of Nio's (NYSE: NIO) models based on the latest NT 2.0 platform come standard with the Nio Adam supercomputer, which is built on four DRIVE Orin chips and has more than 1,000 TOPS of computing power.

Orin is the world's highest-performance, most advanced processor for self-driving vehicles and robots, offering up to 254 TOPS to handle a large number of applications and deep neural networks running simultaneously in autonomous vehicles and robots, Nvidia said following the launch of Nio ET5 in late 2021.

In addition to using the DRIVE Orin chip in vehicles, Nio is equipping the third-generation battery swap station with 2 Nvidia Orin chips for a total computing power of 508 TOPS.

Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) also uses two Nvidia Orin X chips in its AD Max smart driving system, and its AD Pro system uses the Journey 5 chips from local Chinese supplier Horizon Robotics.

Back to BYD, the NEV maker announced on March 23 last year that it had entered into a partnership with Nvidia on smart driving technology to equip some of its NEVs with the Nvidia DRIVE Hyperion platform for smart driving and smart parking of vehicles starting in the first half of 2023.

BYD's NEVs will use the Nvidia DRIVE Orin chip as a centralized computing and AI engine for autonomous driving and smart cockpit features, according to the company's press release at the time.

On January 4 of this year, BYD announced that it was working with Nvidia to bring Nvidia GeForce NOW cloud gaming streaming to its vehicles.

BYD is the largest NEV maker in China, selling 1,863,494 NEVs in 2022, up 208.64 percent year-on-year.

The company sold 193,655 NEVs in February, up 27.96 percent from 151,341 units in January and 119.36 percent from 88,283 units a year earlier, data it released earlier in the month showed.

BYD working with Nvidia to bring GeForce NOW cloud gaming to its vehicles