Robert Bosch GmbH made headlines this past month as various newsoutlets echoed Bloomberg’s headline: “Bosch to Build $1.1 Billion Chip Plant for Self-Driving Cars.” While it may not quite stray into alternative fact territory, the headlines is somewhat misleading because the chips are not reserved for self-driving cars. Buried within the article is the acknowledgement that Bosch says they will also be used for “smart homes and Internet-linked city infrastructure.” By all measures, it's clear the company intends to be a major player in the global supply chain for connected electronics.
It’s true that the company is invested in the development of autonomous cars. In March of this year, it GmbH announced a partnership with the American company NVIDA, which produces artificial intelligence (AI) systems for self-driving vehicles” in which it would build an “artificial intelligence self-driving systems for mass market cars” based on NVIDA Drive PX line with Xavier architecture.
So it does make sense that it would be considering the automotive customer, especially if it is true that, as the Bloomberg article states, each car purchased last year “contained an average of nine chips made by Bosch.”
However, the story that Bosch itself tells about its plans for the factory it is building in Dresden, Germany are not that narrowly focused, as revealed by its press release.
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