Nividia Versus Mobileye - and They Are Not Alone

Nvidia is confident. It has a buddy in Tesla owner Elon Musk, it has truck stuff going on with PACCAR, a major truck manufacturer, and Wall Street is enamored.

More than apples

They do more than grow apples, launch ships, and grow computer companies out there in the other Washington - Washington State that is. Now they are happy as clams in their expectation that truck manufacturer PACCAR's partnership with Nvidia will bring lots of driverless truck manufacturing to the Evergreen State. Others, probably in states with more professional truck drivers, are concerned about the loss of trucker jobs and jobs in the industries that serve those drivers. Waffle House? Flying J? Where will they be without the middle class disposable income of truck drivers?

Cheap can be good

Forget expensive LIDAR and sensors, this Dr. Jianxiong Xiao, a computer vision professor at Princeton,is using $50 cameras from Best Buy, a US chain store that sells TVs, laptops and batteries. It's not a high-tech mecca. The company is AutoX and an article describes the non-Mobileye approach to driverless.

Yes, the video of the self-driving AutoX car is here.

Let's face it, there are reports each day about up and comers in the software engineering, cameras, and LIDAR corners of the driverless supply chain. There are still plenty of start ups willing to push their ideas and compete with the big guys in this still fluid market.

And from somewhere in the Mediterranean ...

Mobileye has money now that Intel has purchased the company. The question is whether Mobileye can maneuver past Nvidia with its over $15 billion infusion of cash from Intel. Gee, no one talks millions anymore. However, I am not the only one doubting Intel's strategy. Is Intel grasping to have a presence in a market it is unfamiliar with? Did it overpay and go the wrong route as far as artificial intelligence?