Yes, even Nvidia's head of automotive is fighting for compute

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**Nilay Patel** (1:22)
Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking about Xinzhou Wu, who is head of automotive at Nvidia. Nvidia is obviously in the news constantly right now because of the AI boom. And it's one of the most valuable companies in the world because the AI industry can't get enough of the company's GPUs. But Nvidia is also a key supplier to the auto industry. It's had chips and cars for years now. And Xinzhou has been instrumental in building a complete autonomous driving system that automakers can just use. And it's already in place in newer Mercedes EVs, as you'll hear him mention several times. So I really wanted to get his perspective on how the auto industry is handling the big transition to self-driving EVs. The goal that every carmaker and supplier will tell you is coming, but which seems maybe farther away in 2026 than ever. The EV adoption cycle in the United States is fully off track. Self-driving seems to forever be stuck trying to solve the final 20% of situations. And cars themselves just keep getting more expensive. Even as consumers are feeling the squeeze of inflation and rising energy prices across the board. You'll hear Xinzhou say that there's actually startling progress in reinventing the fundamental nature of the car itself. Something the industry has long called the software-defined vehicle, controlled by just a handful of powerful computers instead of dozens or even hundreds of independent electronic control units, or ECUs. If you're a Decoder listener, you have heard so many carmakers talk about the need to get away from ECUs. Xinzhou says that moment is basically here. We also talked a lot about the Chinese car industry and how it's been able to essentially get a head start on all of this because it began building on EV architectures and platforms instead of having to manage a transition away from gas cars and all of those ECUs.
Xinzhou used to work at a Chinese OEM, so he has quite a bit of insight here. We also talked about working at Nvidia itself. That's a unique company with a unique leader in Shenzhen Wang. And Xinzhou said his three years there so far have been a rapid learning experience. He didn't shy away from the reality of needing to compete for resources and manufacturing capacity against the company's booming AI business.
His description of what wins those arguments, especially when his customers are as slow and cost-diverse as automakers, is fascinating. Of course, we also talked about AI and how Nvidia's approach to autonomy brings together what Xinzhou calls the classical stack and the ability for reasoning models to actually operate the car. There's a lot here, including the idea that you'll have an AI model literally talking to itself to figure out how to drive your car, which I find both incredibly interesting and incredibly funny. Of course, you can't talk about electric cars or autonomous vehicles without talking about Tesla and Elon Musk, so I asked Xinzhou pretty directly where Tesla is on the full self-driving curve and whether that technology can actually do what Elon claims it can do without having to put LiDAR sensors on the car.
Tell me if you think his answer holds up. Okay, Xinzhou Wu, head of automotive at Nvidia. Here we go.
Xinzhou Wu, you are the head of automotive at Nvidia. Welcome to Decoder.